Take a look where you have Family Circle as this is a magazine people will purchase on impulse since it is not out every month like clockwork. I find it works well in a full face placement next to weekly magazines and next to sister magazine title Better Homes and Gardens.
Here is a video I shot Saturday at my newsXpress Southland business. Sorry it is a bit sketchy in parts – I was trying to avoid customers as I walked through the store. The goal of the video is to provide a sense of layout, commitment to branding, guidance of traffic flow and that this is not a traditional newsagency.
newsXpress Southland from mark fletcher on Vimeo.
This is not your average newsagency. Performance wise, it is tracking at 12% year on year growth and most of that growth is coming from products with a gross profit of 50% or more, often items you would not find in a newsagency.
This is a new traffic business, chasing non traditional newsagency shoppers across several demographics. The business has been open two years. It is the only newsagency in the large Westfield centre. The previous newsagency, a nextra branded business, went broke.
I don’t get to this business often. It is run under management, excellent management. What I saw Saturday was an optimistic business embracing opportunities outside what are usual for our channel. It made me very happy.
This tip is for any newsagents contemplating storing unsold Mother’s Day stock for next year. Don’t. Quit it or give it away, fast. Moving stock to the back room increases the costs associated with the stock. Quit it now. Start next year fresh.
Too often I hear newsagents criticise employees for decisions they have made and mistakes in dealing with customer situations when the criticism more fairly rests back with the employer for poor leadership. By poor leadership I mean lack of training or the absence of a policy.
Unless your employees know what you want them to do or how you want them to handle any situation, what they actually do may be more on you than on them.
Here are some everyday queries for which you need to provide training or have a policy and suggested processes:
There are many more customer encounters you could cover. Us you do not train every employee, if you do not have appropriate policies, what your employees do comes down to common sense and you cannot expect them to share your common sense.
Sourcing this Prince DVD reprint last week was a deliberate marketing decision. While we mourn the passing of Prince along with many, we are retailers. Key to our success is finding products to stock that people purchase on impulse. This means buying tactically and leveraging our buying through marketing. It means engaging with suppliers more likely to respond quickly to opportunities. That is what happened here with the Prince DVD, one of three Prince products on our aisle-end display.
Immediately we had secured stock of the DVD and before it arrived in-store we promoted it on social media, outside our four walls, letting people know and connecting our business with their interest to have something to remember Prince with after his passing.
Small businesses can move faster on opportunities like this than business. But we have to be proactive, we have to chase suppliers. If we leave it to most suppliers, but the time they get to us community interest is more likely to be satisfied.
My marketing tip today – react to major news stories with buying and leverage social media for out of store promotion of what you buy.
Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood yesterday delivered a presentation at the Macquarie Australia Conference in Sydney. The content is available online through the ASX website.
Below are some excerpts from the published material followed by my comments:
Over the last four years we have reset the 185-year-old Fairfax. We are now a modern media business that is diversified and ready, willing and able to be part of the future.
The strategic priorities and opportunities for each of our businesses feed into our Group strategy, which is to ‘transform, grow and invest’ to drive long-term performance.
We have delivered a 26% reduction in annualised publishing costs (that is $400 million).
At the same time, our digital and print audiences have never been larger, reaching 12.9 million Australians and 3.2 million New Zealanders, as well as 2.2 million radio listeners.
While it could be tempting for newsagents to be critical here from their perspective, I think a more helpful take-away is the focus on cutting costs and pursuing revenue from other sources. These are mission critical moves for newsagents. Newsagents need to set their 140 year old businesses (that’s how old the channel is) on a similar path – cutting costs and pursuing other revenue sources. Many of us have been doing this for years now.
Over the last four years, we have reshaped all aspects of the way we operate. We have built a stronger, more diversified, digitally-driven business that is leaner and more agile.
We have never shied away from the fact that we are on a print to digital journey. We have prepared our business to minimise
Newsagents need to be on a similar journey, replacing traffic for old products with traffic for new, replacing traffic for agency products with traffic for new.
The reality of media today can be summarised in four points:
1. Consumers have wholeheartedly embraced digital, as reflected by the rising use of search engines, social media as well as going online for news and information. Print is steadily declining but still attracting valuable audiences. Already around 70% of our Metro audiences reach us via digital means.
2. Print advertising and circulation revenue continue to decline. Digital display advertising and circulation alone cannot provide an offset.
3. Mass circulation print products involve a high level of fixed cost, notwithstanding the reduction and variabilisation we have achieved over the past four years.
4. Technology and systems costs to support legacy print and digital infrastructure have grown over the years, creating complex and expensive support requirements.
In short, failure to address the old – the traditional model – is not an option.
These are points we need to read again and again. In short, the points come back to: spend less on the parts of your business that are shrinking, chase new traffic, not acting is not an option.
It should surprise no one, and certainly not us, that the seven-day-a-week publishing model will eventually give way to weekend-only or more targeted printing for most publishers. We are already seeing this happening offshore.
Quite simply it is likely that one day, the viability for newspapers on current trends will run out. It isn’t going to happen overnight – but eventually it will.
The question for newsagents is: are you ready for this? Are you ready for the decline in daily traffic that will result from the end to the daily newspaper? Are you ready to no longer be the habit-based retail stop-off? The ramifications beyond newspaper sales could be extraordinary.
Material reduction in printing and distribution costs resulting from significant reduction in newspaper publishing frequency. We expect increased industry cooperation on printing and distribution.
Distribution newsagents take note.
This slide on page 19 of the presentation document is telling. There is no denying the trend re print circulation reported by PWC and included in the presentation by Fairfax – and seen in our own benchmark studies.
I like that Fairfax is transparent about what it is doing and why and that it has been for some years. Presentations like the one to which I refer above can inform newsagents for their own plans, and this is what I hope happens.
Sure, it would be easy for newsagents to complain about Fairfax for a various reasons. I think time and energy would be better spent learning from their plans and considering this information when making our own plans for our future.
If you have not significantly changed your newsagency in recent years, what should this Fairfax presentation encourage you to do:
B&T has a report about The New York Times offering ready to make meal ingredients based on recipes published by the title. It’s a healthier variation on the free newspaper with a McDonalds meal I guess.
Here are photos I have been sent by newsagents of magazines they received yesterday. The stickers on the covers are from other newsagencies where these magazines failed to sell.
Publishers ought to ensure we receive clean, fresh and merchantable stock.
Happy magazine is a start-up Aussie magazine serving a niche in the music, art, culture space. It is genuinely unique and comes from a place of passion of the creative team behind the title. However, like any indie magazine start-up, the challenge with Happy magazine is how to reach people who will buy the magazine. There is no newsagent distributor relationship in place.
Any magazine specialist would like to have Happy in the range.
Talking with the editor last week, I said I would write about Happy here, so newsagents are aware of the title and so you can comment on indie titles like this and how you might engage with them.
Many publishers visit here to check the temperature of the newsagency channel, please share your thoughts.
Here is the intro email from the editor:
Hi Mark,
Many thanks for the chat a moment ago.Happy has been an online publication since 2013 and here are some stats on that:In Jan we launched a very small but extremely well received A5 magazine: http://store.hhhhappy.com/We jumped very quickly into the territory of 200+ paid annual subscribers but now feel to progress the publication we need to develop our sales department and get it in front of more eyes.Our team is small and sales focus almost entirely on industry contacts, labels, releases etc.If you’d like any further info by all means let me know!CheersRadi
For perspective, check out this “traditional newsagents” for sale for £74,950+sav. The ad caught my attention as it really is a traditional UK newsagent business, away from the centre of town and still with a range of magazines and, by the looks of the photos, an opportunity for cards. This is the kind of newsagency business in the UK I’d buy if I was in the market as the base is flexible enough for potential growth through change. Take a moment and scroll through the photos on the ad. It is interesting to compare with similar high street newsagencies in Australia.
As with any of the major seasons, it is a thrill to find new customers. That is what is happening with Mother’s Day, thanks to this display on the lease line in the newsagency:
The New Daily, a national newspaper launched in the UK two months ago, is to close. Here is brutal commentary from Jeff Jarvis, respected American journalist and journalism professor:
It is most unfortunate that every time this happens, journalists suffer job losses or at least disruption. But enough with the Quixotic attempts to preserve a dying business model that we know is dying. First there was the News Corp. tablet app that was going to preserve our God-given right to package the news and get paid for it. Dead. Then came the Orange County Register’s doubling down on print. Bankruptcy. Now there’s Trinity Mirror’s new print newspaper New Day. Folded.
Yes, I argue that we must innovate. But sorry, these are not innovations. these are exercises in nostalgia. Innovation would be using new tools in new ways to serve people as we could never serve them before.
So, yes, I’m sorry for the disruption to the journos in this latest case but I cannot help chortling at the comeuppance to this effort to restart the Brigadoon Daily, doomed from the start.
I like Jarvis’ directness. I also agree with him. The future of news is about news and not the medium. Too much time is spent by too many on the medium while the future slips away from them.
I visited several Officeworks businesses in Melbourne and Sydney this week to assess changes in-store. I decided to do this following media reports of planned expansion.
In each store I found a layout that made sense and shopping easy, an excellent range of brand and generic products, a feeling of good value in the pricing, engaged staff on the shop floor keen to help and easy access to help through local training.
Most important of all was the personal pitch in-store. While the brand is national, the promotion of local people, in that business, who can help makes the pitch more personal and local.
Here is a pull up banner that greeted me at the Pitt Street Sydney store a couple of days ago:
What is newsagents who are focussed on stationery did this, had a pull up banner of themselves or a team member, personalising the pitch of customer service out the front of the shop or near the entrance.
While this banner is more targeted at the technology customer, it could work equally with stationery as there are many options, many choices to make.
Sure, you would hop your customers would know you, but unless everyone in the town or region shops with you they do not know you, so promoting the people in the business is an important and regular activity.
Also at the entrance to the store is this sign:
Plenty of newsagents I know offer free delivery for stationery, especially in regional locations. However, most do not promote this. Officeworks consistently promotes it.
Inside the store, in the stationery department, regularly they promote impulse purchase items outside their usual location. Like these Sellotape Sticky Dots:
Using a simple clip-strip, they are making a more valuable pitch to shoppers in the aisle looking for calculators and pencils. I do this type of thing in my newsagency, leveraging destination shopper visits to greater value by promoting items one would not usually find in a destination aisle.
Their approach to pens is easy, too. This photo shows part of one side of a double-sided stand. Selecting is easy as is testing the pens.
The simple Try me! message is terrific. In newsagencies we usually have a small pad stuck on a wall. At Officeworks they have long pads, on a small bench, and they invite trying. This simple move shows a more customer-focussed approach on their part.
Outside the shop, on the front window, is this sign that reinforces a key message: shopping with us is easy and can be done at any time.
While I get that many newsagents love to hate Officeworks and that we all have our bad stories about Officeworks, that they are expanding ought to concern us as this shows they are winning with customers and that is all that matters.
Yes, their prices are higher than their marketing suggests. In my view, that ought not be your focus.
If your stationery sales are up year on year then maybe you don’t have as much to work about. However, if your stationery sales are flat or declining year on year, take an objective look at Officeworks. Some of what they are doing could work in your newsagency, even on a smaller scale.
There is plenty Officeworks is getting right. The purpose of this post is to encourage you to treat them seriously as a competitor, to learn from what they are doing and to encourage you to create a better stationery pitch in your business.
The publisher of Gluten-Free Life has been using social media to promote the new issue, out tomorrow. e all ought to respond and leverage this title by promoting it in-store and on our social media pages.
A newsagent called yesterday angry a gift supplier they had purchased from for years has started supplying a pharmacy nearby. The apparent promise of exclusivity has been ignored with a there is nothing in writing comment.
If a rep or agent makes such a claim to you, get it in writing and make it clear this commitment is essential to you doing business with them.
Here is how we are leveraging the Captain America: Civil War movie release in the newsagency. Opening last Thursday in the cinemas, the movie blitzed the box office, delivering extraordinary numbers.
If you do not have Captain America product in your newsagency you are missing an opportunity.
In addition to the items in this centrepiece traffic-acttricting display, we have more products nearby.
I think it is essential we connect with these large movie franchises in-store, before the move opens and through the first few weeks … and then later, even years later, as people want to remember the movie.
If you do not connect, you miss the opportunity to demonstrate relevance, achieve excellent impulse purchases and, most important of all, to attract new shoppers to the business. We have been promoting Captain America: Civil War products outside the business and this has resulted in identifiable new traffic shopping with us.
While you could get into this opportunity now, it may be too late for the first major wave of opportunity. The time to order for any major movie franchise is six months or more out. For the last Star Wars movie release, for example, we ordered close to a year out.
The other comment I would make about leveraging movie franchises, aside from the magazines, occasionally, greeting cards, it is non newsagency suppliers who have this licenced product.
One of the ways we can increase engagement with pens in newsagencies is to change the way we approach pens. Or maybe not change, but add to – keep our traditional pen display and add to it by trying something like this, which I saw in a shop last week.
I watched shoppers in this business and plenty who went to the counter with a purchase tried a pen or two. A couple purchased, making the tactical move valuable for the business.
You don’t need to allocate as much space as you can see in the photo, the keys, though, are to have enough range to make a statement, to make testing easy and to change it up regularly so regulars are not blind to the offer.
When it comes to stationery we rely too much on people seeking out the stationery department and making a destination purchase. We need to do more to drive impulse purchases.
One can never have too many pens … that ought to be our motto.
A new card outlet has opened in Sydney’s CBD, in the prestigious Strand Arcade. The Bespoke Letterpress cards are beautiful in design and of excellent production quality. The outpost is inspiring and attracting plenty of interest. I urge newsagents near Sydney to check it out.
The Rotten State of Newsagents – Is it any Wonder Publishers Are Pushing Digital? By John Freeman is an indictment of the state of newsagents in the UK. While I have challenged him on some points, he makes other points all newsagents need to consider.
Freeman needs to look at why newsagents cram magazines into less and less space. Next, he needs to talk about how to address the issues to respect newsagents and publishers. His article misses some key facts.
I agree with what much of what Freeman has written about UK newsagents. Plenty of shops are tired and not up to current retail standards. However, part of the problem could be the return achieved from the category by retailers in the UK. My experience with retailers is they invest based on the financial return.
Here is the content of an email sent to newsagents last week promoting newsXpress:
Innovation for newsagents.
If you want new traffic, a higher than average gross profit, a fresh in-store look and excitement about the future of your business, consider newsXpress. here is just some of what we have delivered this year:
These are just the highlights. We have also engaged on behalf of our members with the ACCC on Tatts related matters and with senior management at Bauer and Gotch on the transition.
We would love to welcome you to our newsXpress community. Click here to read what newsXpress offers. Contact us:
Four videos were also included in the email:
Check out the ad being run by Mildura newsagent John Klemm in a glossy magazine being widely distributed in the area. I like the ad because it pitches quality and customer service in the headline and then focussed on magazine enthusiasts and also pitching a strong commitment to newspapers. It is rare to see such a commitment to print.
Having seen the newsagency for myself on the weekend, the in0store experience matches the pitch in the ad.
I am not sure when this happened but US warehouse retailer Costco is now selling magazines in Australia. Their price is 20% off the cover price. Yes, 20% off. Here is a photo I have been sent from someone visiting a local Costco store.
Costco currently has eight locations in Australia with plans to grow to 25 sores within four years. While it would be easy to dismiss eight stores as not a large enough footprint to hurt magazine sales in other retailers, with revenue of $1.3B in 2015 (source: SMH), Costco is a force to be reckoned with.
While I have never shopped in a Costco, I am told some days the warehouse is packed with shoppers. Each person passing a magazine rack promoting 20% off is being told magazines can be discounted. If these people see the discounted magazines occasionally in supermarkets and regularly at the airports, the message soon sticks to not pay full price of magazines.
Magazines being available in Costco and at 20% off cover price ought to concern us. It demands a response, in-store.
From what I can tell, Costco US started selling magazines around ten years ago. I found this photo promoting 20% off cover price in the US at the Time is Money Mommy blog.
FYI, here is the blogger’s comment:
I used to subscribe to several magazines, but have cut back over the years since I don’t have time to read them. I’ve realized even though subscriptions are cheaper, it makes more sense to just buy the issues I’m interested in. Costco is the place to do it, as they give a 30% discount off the cover price. And yes, I totally bought the US Weekly with Princess Kate on the cover. Chase is golfing tomorrow, and I’m going to sit in the yard and relax while the kids nap!
While we can be angry about what is happening at Costco, that would achieve little. We are better off responding commercially, in our businesses.
I good response from newsagents would be to actively and consistently promote their discount voucher, magazine club card or similar good-value loyalty program. This is what I do in my newsagency. I mention discount vouchers and magazine club cards as they are differentiating offers whereas loyalty points are not – they are not understood and of dubious value, and shoppers get that.
The Costco range is small and magazine purchases will be on impulse. Our best pitch remains to be the destination magazine specialist and to to this in cost effective and commercially viable ways.
Look at the audit log maintained by your newsagency software. Look for patterns of misbehaviour. Look for fraud. If you are not sure, ask your software company and they will help – as there are patterns easily identified that can reveal theft from your business.
This is a challenge as most will not look, preferring ignorance.
While it is good to see newsagents using Facebook and other social media platforms to talk about and promote their businesses, too often the pitch is for product available everywhere, including outside the newsagency channel.
Marketing most noticed is that which stands out, is different to what everyone else with a similar business is doing, unless you want to stay in the chorus and not be noticed.
My marketing tip today: promote what is unique to your business.
I love this employment available poster I saw in the window of a Hong Kong store last week. I love the style, the pitch and the opportunity. From the outset, prospective candidates would understand the opportunity and plenty about the business.
This sign is better than the old: Casual position available, enquire within we see in too many shop windows. Note the commission opportunity and staff discounts. Inspiring!