Author: Mark Fletcher

The one thing successful newsagency businesses have in common is good business data management. Good business data management starts with meaningful product departments and categories.

Don’t fall asleep! Too often newsagents and other small retailers I speak with roll their eyes at this point and say it’s too hard. Nonsense. You’re lazy if you do not setup and maintain a good department and category structure in your newsagency software.

Departments should be high level: stationery, gifts, cards, plush, magazines, newspapers.  No, newspapers and magazines don;t go together. No, art products should not be in stationery. No, gifts should not be part of cards.

Categories – these sit within each department – should be meaningful to you. Do not use suppliers as a category as newsagency software can report separately on suppliers.  Use categories to help you understand what is selling. here are two examples:

• Department: Plush. Categories: Funky, traditional, kids, collector.
• Department: Gifts. Categories: Baby, kids, teen, adult, religious, Xmas, home.
• Department: Stationery. Categories: writing inst., tape, glue, stickers, school, office.

Come up with your own, that are meaningful to you. The goal here is to help you easily see in reports from your software what is working. departments and categories report at a high level. Once you see something of interest you can dig deeper in detailed reports.

get this right and you have a foundation in place to grow your business.

Shopping basket analysis from newsagencies indicates that newspapers and lottery products continue to be inefficient for newsagency businesses. Between 70% and 90% of purchases with either is for that category only: a newspaper alone or a lottery ticket or two and nothing else.

Too often newsagents blame customers and or suppliers for the inefficiency. This is a mistake. The reason for inefficiency lies in the business itself.

If your sales of your top selling (volume) items are inefficient embrace responsibility. Complaining will not change the situation. Act.

Here is one tip that I have found works. When you are closed for the day, run masking or gaffer tape on the floor from the door to where customers go to get their newspaper. Next, run tape from there to the counter. Finally, run tape from the counter to the door.

Walk along the tape. Look at what’s along that route. Look at what customers see, if their eyes are open. Look at what you are promoting along the way and at each destination point: papers, counter, doorway.

Look at the floor, how are you using that?

If your lottery sales are inefficient do the same thing.

Don’t remove the tape and go home until you have an action plan of things to do to make newspapers and or lottery product sales more efficient. Next, act on the plan first thing in the morning.

A good action plan will involve a series of small steps. I’d suggest posters on the floor, maybe a game, with one or two stop points where you feature product. I’d have an over the counter promotional offer. I’d also have an offer at the door. Plus, regardless of what suppliers say, I’d have impulse purchase items right next to the popular inefficient products – including at the lottery counter. If what you do doesn’t work. Go through the process again. This is what a retailer would do. A shopkeeper would stay behind the counter and complain.

Product inefficiency is a challenge for the retailer to resolve.