Fred Nile supports ‘good’ newsagents
While I am not a fan of his policies, I acknowledge Fred Nile supporting ‘good’ newsagents while talking up the latest issue of Quadrant magazine. Not sure why he labels stockists as ‘good’ newsagents.
One failure hurts all newsagents
Thanks to the extraordinary reach of social media, now more than ever, a newsagent letting colleagues down can impact the channel.
While I am sure there is an explanation here, there is no sense of it in this tweet.
The Tatts App could challenge traffic to newsagencies
More products and services people used to visit newsagencies for or to purchase are now available on mobile phones and other devices, potentially reducing the traffic into our stores. Newsagents need to be aware as core traffic is migrating but at a pace that it is barely noticed.
Using the Tatts app I can now check paper ticket results as well as purchase tickets in future lottery draws. It’s fast and easy. Why stand in a line when I can buy when and where I want? Regular Tatts ticket customers will find buying through the App easier and not forgotten.
While the Tatts website has offered Check my ticket for a while, that the App offers this is relatively new I think and it;s the type of innovation people want from mobile Apps.
The Tatts App is getting better – for the consumer and for Tatts – with time. With the App, tatts is doing what it needs to do for its business.
If you are a newsagent who has ever complained that people come in to check their tickets and buy nothing else, you could soon be complaining that people are not coming into check their tickets at all.
Newsagents can’t stop or stall the growth of the Tatts App. But we can develop a business plan that takes into account the take up of this and other Apps.
Footnote: the expansion of Tatts services online and mobile is further argument that newsagents should not be pressured to make the capital investment they are asked to make in Tatts corporate image.
Terrific newsagency counter opportunity from Pilot
I like this small counter display unit for the Pilot erasable pen. The small footprint, understandable pitch and sample pad for shoppers to try the pen for themselves make this something to try at the counter. We’ve had it out for a few days and the pen is selling.
We don’t often place stationery at the counter of the newsagency. It’s good when a supplier packages it in a way that makes giving the premium space an easy decision.
Just read: Hack Attack
I have just finished reading Hack Attack: How the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies.
While I knew the story and had followed it for years, this book shed new light on the awful crimes committed and the subsequent cover up. It should be compulsory reading for any who earn income from newspapers and those interested in what newspapers print. I’d also make it compulsory reading for journalism students.
My only frustration is that News International and those in control of it at the time have not been dealt harshly enough for the crimes committed.
Tasty looking Donna Hay magazine cover
I love the cover of the latest Donna Hay magazine. It’s a perfect pitch for this time of the year and perfect to tap into the craze in Australia now for BBQ. Indeed, BBQ /grill cooking has come of age – you only have to look at the new books out and listen to it being discussed on cooking programs on the radio. This is an ideal Donna Hay cover which we can use to get people buying this magazine who might otherwise have missed it. I suggest co-locating with newspapers.
Your situation in your newsagency is yours to own
It’s not my fault newspaper and magazine sales are falling. It’s not my fault I’m going to lose my business and my home.
The newsagent speaking to me recently was explaining why they were so close to losing their business.
Creditors are circling and they are looking for help. It looks like the request for help has come a year too late. Their own business data from 2012 and 2013 provided evidence of what could happen if they did not act and change their business. The data from 2014 is worse.
They did not act. Indeed, they continued to run their newsagency in a traditional way, offering the traditional range of products.
The result is their situation today, where creditors are circling and their business looks like going into receivership.
This business offers a traditional mix of cards, newspapers, magazines, stationery and lottery products. They have some gifts for Christmas and other seasons but no permanent gift department. They have some soft toys for baby gifts but they are not from a specialist soft toy supplier.
This business is not unique in any way. It’s biggest asset is its convenient location, an assets which have not been leveraged in any way.
I’m not a retailer I’m a newsagent – is what the newsagent said to me in response to me suggesting what they could have done over the last couple of years.
I feel for them as they look set to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than the equity they have on their home.
We have many people in our channel who have been brought in through a system that did not choose and approve retailers. Rather the approval processes focussed on the self interest of a some suppliers selecting based on skills for their products and not for the overall business. Those processes over the last twenty or so years have left us with too many newsagents and not enough retailers.
If this is you, if you feel ill-equipped for being an engaged retailer in today’s market, I say: OWN YOUR SITUATION as that is the starting point for you to create your own success.
Own your situation ASAP. Look at your data, know what it shows you, project your future based on past performance and embrace every change necessary to make your business relevant and viable for your future.
Don’t wait until it is too late to act.
I’d be glad to help.
I don’t like writing a post like this but I feel I have to to get attention of newsagents to look at their numbers and act for themselves on signs of rough waters ahead.
People’s Friend selling out in the newsagency
This special edition of The People’s Friend commemorating The Great War is one issue away from being a sell out. Like every title published under The People’s Friend it’s a great story – not only of the sales of the titles but often for those titles we place around them. We use the traffic attracted by The People’s Friend to help drive sales of other titles. A small amount of effort like this is another way we can grow our magazine sales.
Magazine covers pitching weight loss
These three magazine covers tell us that magazine publishers think people who purchase weeklies are interested in weight loss this time of the year. I’d agree with them based on the interest in other weight loss related titles. This placement is another example of taking note of the covers and placing titles that fit appropriately next to each other.
AFR pushing digital
The front page of today’s Australian Financial Review newspaper is a reminder of the importance Fairfax places on digital as a distribution channel for their content. The sticker offering 50% off a six months digital sub is stuck over news on the print edition. While I am not privy to the financials, I expect the daily print edition of the AFR to be replaced by a digital only product soon. Digital distribution of AFR type content makes sense in this faster and more connected world. Newsagents need to factor this into their business planning.
The challenge for Fairfax is that the news in the AFR and the charts are accessible elsewhere. It’s point of difference is analysis and the question is whether that is worth $1 a day.
Newsagents: beware counterfeit licenced product
Licenced brands are important in our businesses. Licenced brands like Frozen, Sesame Street, Disney and Peppa Pig.
They are licenced brands because they are licenced by the owner of the intellectual property and represent large investment in developing the licence.
The challenge is that these products can be easily copied and governments are under-resourced in detecting and stopping copyright infringement.
Some suppliers of licenced products to our channel are funding legal action to protect their interests and the interests of their partner retailers. I welcome this as I only source genuine licenced products. It angers me when I see a retailer selling a knock-off.
The photo is from a retailer near my newsagency. It took it on Saturday. Their Peppa Pig product is not licenced. The items in the photo are illegal knock-offs. What makes matters worse is that some of the items have been so poorly made that they pose a health risk in my view.
Newsagents selling licenced products need to be part of the compliance regime. We should report to our suppliers when we see retailers selling products that are not officially licenced. Such reports should include details of the outlet and photos of product. We should also report these infringements to IP Australia and the ACCC.
I’d also suggest informing staff members so they can speak to customers as appropriate.
In my own case I am letting the landlord know because any retailer selling illegal copies is a breach of the lease of just about any major landlord. I suspect the landlord could be the first to act out of the various bodies I could complain to.
I will also take it up with the group brand under which the retailer trades under. However, it’s possible they are involved.
I did try and speak with the manager of the shop. Their reprocess was that they did not speak English. True.
Taking action matters because we pay a higher price to access genuine licenced product. This is something to protect for us, for the licence owner and for the consumer who purchases Peppa Pig product believing it to be genuine.
Newsagents feeding the post-Christmas bloat with healthy eating magazines
Diet season is in full force as happens every year after Christmas and New Year celebrations as Aussies head on holiday to the beach and elsewhere. This is a perfect time to get diet and health magazines out on show.
Australian Healthy Food is a perfect title to place in the spotlight – to serve those concerned about how they feel after eating poorly. This is the time when people are more likely to notice the title, browse it, and, hopefully, purchase it.
Listening to talkback radio on the weekend – healthy eating to lose the Christmas / New Year weight gain is a hot topic.
We have taken time to ensure that we have full cover displays of key healthy eating titles to make the most of people wanting to eat healthier. I’d urge others to do this. A few minutes of care with magazine placement could help you achieve additional sales. That’s got to be a good start to the year.
We have more opportunities for growing magazine sales that we give ourselves credit for. I think the key is product placement – the right product placed in the right location will drive sales more so than a pretty display or an aisle end billboard display.
Take time to look at covers and have places where you can ensure full cover display.
While we can complain about supply and margin, we can also do a bit of extra work ourselves to grow magazine sales and fightback against the migration of magazine sales away from our channel.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: make your own season
It is easy to get caught up in the major seasons and appreciate the break between them to recharge. I think there is value for our independent retail businesses to play away from the main game, to create our own seasonal opportunities.
Done well and with a small investment in marketing you can achieve more notice than focussing only on the big seasons.
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne talk about this in their book, Blue Ocean Strategy – a terrific business book I first read eight years ago. Their thesis is that companies can succeed not by battling competitors but rather by creating ″blue oceans″ of uncontested market space.
newsXpress, the newsagency marketing group with which I am involved does this regularly. For example, it has declared January jigsaw month. Backed by a supplier deal providing a considerable discount off the already discounted newsXpress price and supported with professional marketing collateral, we are running a January is Jigsaw Month promotion. It has been timed to tap into the challenge of what to do during the school holidays. Early indications are of an excellent sales boost.
Sure we are still running a post Christmas sale – we’re in a shopping centre and we’d be crazy not to. However, our Jigsaw promotion is a point of difference, shoppers notice and comment. It shows us as playing outside the very full red ocean filled with other retailers.
This is exactly the type of activity W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne call for businesses owners to undertake in their book.
Sunday newsagency management tip: choose the best team for 2015
How good is the team in your retail newsagency? Is it the best team you could have? If not, invest time at the start of the year to improve the team.
Either replace people, including you, or train them to ensure your team is the best it can be to position your business for the best result.
What is the point of going into the year with anything but the best team? Especially when this year you will face more competition directly and indirectly than ever before.
My management tip today is to work on your team, make it better trained and more competitive than last year.
If you are not sure where to start with your training, consider sharing more information about the business. I have seen excellent engagement follow greater disclosure about the challenges of the business. This has come about because your challenges become their challenges.
If the key weakness is you, however, consider working elsewhere. If that’s not an option, you have to change, you have to lift your game to make your business more competitive.
Some retailers benefit from the heatwave
While many in Australia fight to protect their homes and communities from bushfires today, it feels inappropriate to benefit from the surge in sales as a result of people flocking to shopping centres to escape the heat.
That’s what is happening though. Today will be a much busies than usual first sSaturday of the new year as a result of the extraordinary heat.
Newsagents keen to participate in newsagency sales benchmark study
In the 24 hours since announcing the December 2014 quarter Newsagency Sales Benchmark Study I have received more than fifty submissions.
I can tell already this will be a fascinating study with excellent insights into newsagency business performance across the country.
For years the Newsagency Sales Benchmark Study tracked declines, particularly in print media sales. Now, it is exciting to see growth in categories as more newsagents pursue change in their model and seek out new (to them) revenue opportunities.
I hope to have the analysis of the data done in the next two weeks.
While done under the auspices of my newsagency software company, the study results are made available to all newsagents through this blog.
Strong Christmas for stationery sales in the newsagency
While on a stationery theme, our stationery sales were up 33% in the December quarter with the stand out successes being
- Address books up 96% – $600 in growth.
- Desk accessories up 77% – $1,500 in growth.
- Pens up 21% – $600 in growth.
What makes the sales growth even more valuable is that our stock investment has not changed – our return on inventory investment has increased.
Located in a less than ideal aisle in the store, stationery works well primarily because it is brand focussed, clean, well laid out and very shoppable. In addition to unit sales growth, revenue is up because of the higher mark-up we now apply to stationery. Since most people shop with us out of convenience, we apply a convenience premium.
Officeworks promoting back to school in shopping centres
I was surprised at the Officeworks Back to School outpost in a shopping centre in Melbourne a couple of days ago. Maybe I have missed but I do not recall seeing Officeworks running outposts in centres where they do not have shops.
Their pitch looks strong even though newsagents have better deals. Their price guarantee pitch is clever, worded I suspect to limit the opportunity of it being called on that much.
I’d be interested to know if others have seen Officeworks setup outposts in other shopping centres.
Try this for promoting Back to School
If you are running Back to School in your newsagency, consider a locally targeted Facebook campaign. You can select the suburbs to target, gender and age. Targeted campaigns like this are not expensive. You can set your total spend goal. Facebook provides terrific analytics on engagement. I have used local Facebook ads with terrific success.
Officeworks ramps up Back to School
Officeworks is promoting and extraordinary offer as part of their in-store, outpost and advertising Back to School pitch: find and identical item on a quoted school list at a lower price and we’ll beat it by 20%.
Newsagents competing with Back to School need to be aware of this and the conditions associated with it.
I don’t participate in Back to School as I find more profitable to invest in promotions others are not running this time of the year.
While I understand the theory that cheap Back to School product will show you as competitive, I am skeptical that those whoppers buying based on price will think first of you for their purchases through the year – unless you advertise on price all year round as Officeworks does.
Back to Officeworks: be aware of their offer and have a plan for competing with it.
What do you do when you’re out of stock of a magazine?
We sold out of That’s Life by yesterday morning and debated whether to purchase more copies from the Coles nearby where they are loaded up. I decided against purchasing from Coles because of the impact it would have on our sales data – who wants the XchangeIT police on your back for bad data? What do you do in this situation?
Wine or science
I found the latest Cosmos magazine in with our wine titles. It makes sense when you look at the cover. Someone looking for a wine title could be very happy with the cover story in this issue. Locating magazines away from their usual location can increase sales.
An astronaut’s guide to optimism
I love this timely video from Colonel Chris Hadfield about optimism
I’m posting it here for New Year inspiration.
Optimism in dogs
It’s the start of a new year, a perfect time to be optimistic. While this video from the University of Sydney is about dogs, there are messages for us humans…
The optimism of Life is Good
I was fortunate to hear Bert Jacobs of Life is Good speak at a conference last year and was taken with his message of optimism. It’s a message that speaks to us as newsagents in a challenged marketplace operating challenged businesses. I;m sharing it today is it’s a terrific message of optimism: