I like the retro pens we’ve got in from Parker. They are a nice fit with a retro display and they work well at the counter stand alone.
With retro being so in right now, the launch of this range is well timed. Also, it’s to celebrate Parker’s 125th anniversary.
The display unit is quite small so it needs to be called out in some way to appeal to fans of retro product. We are trying some things here to connect with these shoppers.
Golden Casket newsagents in Queensland have won an increase in commission to 9.3%. The Newsagencies For Sale website has the information. This is great news for QLD newsagents. It makes newsagency businesses more appealing to buyers.
There are two types of traffic generation I obsess about in my newsagencies: getting customer inside and getting them further inside.
Often in a newsagency customers only shop the front part of the business. We need to work hard to lure traffic further inside our newsagencies. We can do this by giving shoppers a reason to shop the shop.
One product we use to lure shoppers deeper into the business is the humor spinner from card company Spirit. I find this works a treat. The stands attracts two types of people – those looking for a funny card and those who pass time reading funny cards. The stand is a perfect browsing opportunity.
We move the Spirit humor stand around the store every few weeks. Right now it’s located in front of our magazine department where it is attracting more shoppers to our magazine department. I’d encourage other newsagents with the stand to try this placement. You’ll see upside in Spirit card sales as well as upside in magazine sales.
The other day I noticed a shopper browsing the cards and then moving to browse magazines. While I can’t be certain, it looked to me like they only got to our magazines thanks to the card unit. They bought a magazine.
It’s important we do this, place products such that they bring shoppers deeper into our shops. Indeed it is this above average behavior as retailers that will help deliver for us above average business results.
Newsagents who run their businesses in an average way will achieve average results. Yes this is a glib comment. It’s also true.
I urge newsagents reading this to look at their product placement to assess whether they are, through this, luring shoppers deeper into their shops. Excellent spinners, like this one from Spirit, can help us achieve better results from existing foot traffic.
FOOTNOTE: Reflecting my obsession, I’ve asked staff to ensure the spinner is turned to a specific facing of cards as I see this as working best to get people engaged. Crazy, yeah – but chasing sales.
I noticed iPad & iPad mini for Seniors in a newsagency earlier this week. It’s a title I could sell easily in my three newsagencies. To get it I have to chase it. Despite their claims otherwise, too often the magazine distributors do not scale out based on what their data shows will sell in a newsagency. This failure drives oversupply as well as undersupply and causes plenty of frustration for newsagents. This failure is what we will find is one cause of newsagents getting out of magazines in the future.
We received five boxes of Teen Beach Movie postcard packs from Network Services Monday in what appears to be gross oversupply. One of our team members checked and discovered Teen Beach Movie is a made for TV Disney Channel movie to be broadcast in Australia on August 9 on the Australian Disney Channel. Unless there is something missing
Here is another newsagency performance assessment I have recently completed. This is an interesting business facing traffic disruption in a high tourism location – challenges faced by many newsagents.
My comments are direct and to the point. My intention is not to offend but to get your better engaged with the management of your newsagency business.
Good data feeds good business decisions. I can see in your Monthly Sales Comparison Report data that you do not scan everything you sell. For example, in the three months I have data for, you sold 546 stationery items without scanning them and 4,248 newspapers without identifying the titles (by scanning them or using a hotkey). It’s important you scan everything.
Now, onto my analysis of sales by each part of the business comparing three months this year to the same period a year ago.
- OVERALL SALES. Number of sales is down 11%. This is worse than the average I am seeing for newsagency businesses.
- REVENUE. This is down by 15%. It is concerning that the fall here is bigger than the fall in the number of sale transactions. The best way to assess this is by looking at GST collected.
- CARDS. Sales are down 3% off a low base. I am not too concerned here. however, I note that you;re doing only $500 a week in cards. Is this an opportunity. While I appreciate you see mainly tourist customers, could you change your card offer to better connect with tourists?
- CIGARETTES. The decline of 18% is considerable. You’re now doing $2,200 a week in sales. You need to check your stock holding as if it is greater than $5,000 you are probably losing money. The other option is to look at your price. Are you making the highest margin you can based on your convenient location.
- GIFTS. Sales are up by 599% off a tiny base. $75 a week in gift sales is hardly earth shattering. Based on your card sales you should be doing at least $200 a week in gifts however I suspect you could do far better than this. The gift category is important since it lifts the overall gross profit of your business.
- INSTANT SCRATCH TICKETS. Your sales are down by 22% and this is worse than the average decline for Queensland. This needs urgent attention.
- LOTTO SALES. Your lotto sales are up 4% and while this is good news, the increase is lower than the average I am seeing for Queensland. Yu need to do better. how are you promoting. If you are only doing what is asked of you it is not enough. Come up with your own ideas for promoting lotto products. A good campaign can draw shoppers from the street.
- MAGAZINES. Some good news here. Unit sales declined 8% and sales declined 9% – both lower than your overall store average. That said, your weekly sales total of $1,550 is low. In fact, it could put your accounts at risk. I’d urge you to take a hard look at your magazine department: undertake a full relay, make your magazine layout compelling and enjoyable. Entice shoppers with your placement.Your data shows the convenience nature of the business with women’s weeklies accounting for 19.74% of all sales Your 3% growth here is good. Continue to focus on this category as the hero.
– Women’s Interests magazines account for 12.96% of sales but they are down by 15% year on year. This is where a relay should help.
– Sport magazines account for 15.85% of your magazine sales. Excellent news. However, your sales are down by 23%.
– I am surprised at the small contribution of some categories and would encourage you to work on growing their sales: food, crosswords, motoring and computers & gaming.- NEWSPAPERS. The decline in unit sales of 22% must be of concern to you. That’s a decline of 535 newspapers a week. You have to be asking yourself what are you doing to replace this lost traffic? Now is the time for this question to be asked and an action plan put in place.
- STATIONERY. Revenue is down 22% and stationery sales are down to $700 a week. I’d be looking very carefully at your range and wondering if you have the right mix for your convenience / tourism shoppers.
Your location and product sales mix makes me ask the question: Is it time for you to cease identifying as a newsagency and start trading with a different business identity more attuned to people walking past your business? Give people more reason to walk in and browse your shop than the old newsagency approach that may not be connecting with shoppers in your unique situation.
Your data shows a fundamental shift away from traditional newsagency products and if this is not responded to by the business then a predictable end for the business will be reached. This does not have to be the case. Your data also shows opportunities in terms of the types of customers and what they are buying. Use this data to kick start your business plans.
If it were up to me I’d rebrand as something fresh – after I had reconfigured the business to sell products to the unique people who walk past your shop front every day. I’d look carefully at the successful retail businesses nearby. I’d also look at how I could make shopping with me easier and more enjoyable.
I hope these comments help.
In a follow-up discussion with one of the owners of the business I’ve got an excellent answer for the department sales of stationery – cardboard and paper without barcodes.
We’re enjoying excellent success with Forever Clover, a trading card product for girls.
Our success is a direct result of the intervention of the manager of one of my newsagencies. He went looking for a trading card product for girls and found this. Forever Clover had not been sent to us by Gordon & Gotch – we chased it.
We have Forever Clover at the counter next to the AFL cards – a strategic and successful placement.
We’re seeing excellent sales of the inflatable card range from Hallmark. They are an easy shop floor pitch to card browsers as the card becomes a gift in itself. I think our sales have been helped by the header cards – a line in a row makes them stand out from all kids cards. Innovation in card products is important as it helps to us to reach a broader range of shoppers with the category. Today’s card shopper has more options than ever for expressing feelings and card design needs to innovate to be competitive.
The Age today published a good report about challenges faced by online retailers, focused on a specific example of challenges faced by bike retailers. This article drew many comments – 417 by 1pm when comments were closed. It shocks me that they would shut down comments. Okay some were off topic while others were used to push commercial agendas but most comments were contributions to a good discussions.
Comments are the lifeblood of online content. I have seen situations where comments have given otherwise missed content a stronger life.
Fairfax management charged with the online / digital future of the company ought to review their position on comments.
I’d be interested in hearing from newsagents on what they offer in terms of rest and meal breaks. I am especially interested in rest breaks and how you roster to minimise the interruption in smaller newsagencies. I prefer an approach that’s more relaxed re access to drinks and bathroom breaks than a formal break.
Here’s what the retail award says FYI:
Unit sales of AFL cards are up more than 25% year on year for us and we’re very happy with that. As the photo shows we’re not doing anything special other than giving over a small amount of space at the counter. I’d be interested in year on year sales data comparing newsagencies to convenience and other outlets with the products.
The benefit for us is more than the 25% sales growth of the AFL cards thanks to products we have placed next to the cards through the season.
We’ve enjoyed a surge in plush sales in the last week of holidays with $400+ days since mid last week. I’d like to say it’s in response to some initiative we’ve run but I can’t. Sure we have had featured plush ranges at the front of the shop but we have done that before.
What I find most interesting about plush is that it sells off beautifully merchandised displays as well as it sells our of stuffed-to-the-hilt displays shelves. Something we have found that works for us is to relay plush regularly – every four weeks or so. regulars find new items and a fresh display attracts new shoppers to the business.
After more than thirty years in print, venerable US general computer magazine PCWorld is to close the print edition to focus on digital. Time has the story including some excellent background including speculation that it’s the end of computer magazines.
I have been working this week with a newsagent dealing with a possible employee theft situation. there was a disconnect between the cash they balanced at the end of the day and what they balanced. A colleague of mine prepared advice for them on managing cash from the end of shift to the bank and I share it here for others:
While different people will have different processes, the key is that know track all cash from register drawer to your bank account. Any hole in your process is an invitation for theft.
Newsagencies don’t have any exclusive products. Magazines, newspapers, stationery, lotto, toys, gifts – what we sell is available anywhere.
What is exclusive to us is our experience and the customer service through which we provide access to that experience.
My newsagency marketing tip today is in the form of a question I think we each need to ask ourselves: what are we doing to show off our experience?
Sure we have lots of retailers competing with us. Almost none of our competitors has our experience nor our ability to get on the shop floor and show this off.
Newslink and Relay newsagencies are running an excellent Tour de France promotion which is being supported by a broad range of suppliers.
This promotion shows how a retail network where decisions are made at head office and store level engagement is not in question can work with suppliers to unlock prizes of excellent value for even smaller opportunities like the Tour de France.
Unity has commercial value.
I’m disappointed by the Tweet from Oxygen magazine that say: Fat Loss 2013 is on sale NOW! Pick up your copy from selected Coles Supermarkets, all good newsagents or online at the following linkhttp://ow.ly/mQCRq.
My disappointment is that a Coles outlet without the title was not selected and that a newsagent without the title is not good.
Most newsagents do not have a say in whether they get this title or not. To label those with it as good reflects an ignorance in the way the magazine distribution model operates. The number of Coles outlets with the magazine is more a function of the pockets the publisher is prepared to pay for.
The Oregonian newspaper in the US is cutting its seven day a week home delivery service to four days a week reports the newspaper on its own website. The newspaper has 170,000 subscribers.
What’s interesting in the move is that they will still publish seven days a week yet only home deliver on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
We have had a terrific couple of weeks with school holidays. We have seen plenty of new shoppers in the centre. Our good sales have been driven by a front of store pitch that is not common for a newsagency. This opens us broader range of browsers.
I have included a photo to illustrate my point. (click on it) You can see our focus on younger shoppers and those shopping the centre with and or for younger people. There is a small representation (far right) of magazines. The rest is plush,Beanie Kids, AFL products interactive toys and gifts – with a backdrop of greeting cards.
We are not doing anything special here, it’s basic retail – configuring the store to suit the opportunities of the season.
This type of work, generating new traffic for good margin product, is far more important for an newsagency business than taking on products or services that leech off existing newsagency traffic. I mention this because of current offers being put to newsagents that do this – leech … rather than generate new traffic.
The newsagencies that will do best from here on will be those generating new traffic for good margin product.
We received Classic Car magazine for the first time this week in one of my newsagencies. It’s their 20th anniversary issue so it’s not surprising I guess.
I have removed the card inserted in the magazine promoting a bonus anniversary lift out. as it’s mainly promoting subscriptions and I’m not about give them bonus space to do this.
We have three unlikely magazines next to each other thanks to their covers featuring Hugh Jackman and his new Wolverine movie. SciFoNOW, EMPIRE and Men’s Fitness look good next to each other in this simple full face display.
We also have the titles on display in their usual location.
I am disappointed at the ever increasing number of bagged magazines from Bauer. We received two this week. Each bagged offer requires additional pocket allocation. They don’t drive incremental business and each time I have asked for data to support the publisher claim it has not been forthcoming. If I was presented evidence I might look at them differently. As it stands, these bagged magazines only serve to educate shoppers to not pay full price in my view.
We received two different looking looking Herald Sun newspapers today. One was more up to date, more likely to drive impulse purchases. Luckily we checked and adjusted the stack. Australians love a good sporting story.
I am regularly asked to assess the performance of newsagency businesses and comment on what I see in their data. What follows below is the feedback I provided to one new newsagent earlier this week. I share it here with their permission:
The comments I make below are not intended to offend you however it is possible they will. They are direct, to the point as I have found there is value in calling it as I see it. The comments reflect what I see is the state of your business as represented in the Monthly Sales Comparison Report for April through June 2013 compared to 2012.
Your business data is the best assessment of business performance as it does not lie as long as you use the system to track all sales.
I have broken the assessment down by various parts of the business.
- TRAFFIC. Number of sales is down by 13%. This is very significant, considerably above average for a newsagency. It makes me wonder how you are marketing the business externally – advertising, promotion, offers.
- SALES. Revenue is down by 11%. Also very high and concerning.
- CARDS. You are not arriving stock properly – see unknown category. You should talk with support about getting this sorted out. This could be because you may have changed card companies. The sales decline is on par with the rest of the business.
- CIGARETTES. The decline here is less than for the average for the business. This is good news. However, be careful since there is no upside in tobacco product sales.
- CONFECTIONERY. 22% decline. Worse than the business average. You need to take action here. Look at your product range, your display and your pricing. Something is not working for you. Also look at the value of your sock. If you have more than $1,000 in stock you;re losing money. Act with urgency here.
- GIFTS. You are managing the data poorly. What does assorted gifts mean. Assorted gifts account for 67.72% of your sales. Categories are supposed to guide you meaningful information. I like to see: male, female, teens, kids, babies. Or: home, traditional, retro, funky. Categories should help guide your decisions. Assorted is meaningless. So, get your data right – the help desk can help you with this. In terms of sales, the 7% decline is just below the business average so that is good news.
- LOTTO. 12% up is good news. My question is what are you doing to leverage lotto customer traffic? Are you helping your lotto customer spend on other products you offer? your data suggests not.
- MAGAZINES. Unit sales down 21% and revenue down 18%. Both are bad numbers compared to the rest of your business and the average for the newsagency channel. This situation needs urgent action. When did you last do a full magazine relay? If not in the last six months get to it urgently. Take a fresh approach with magazine location and display. One you get the layout right I’d look at some form of magazine related promotion to reward people who are especially loyal to you.
– Your data shows that Motoring titles are your top performing, accounting for 17.10% of your magazine sales. Wow! This is your hero category for the men’s section. Sport at 9.40% is also doing well.
– Your women’s titles are troubled. Women’s Weeklies are down 22% in unit sales and Women’s Interests down 25%. Has something happened in your newsagency to turn women off? I ask this question seriously. These declines need arresting first followed by rebuilding.
– You are under-performing newsagency channel averages when it comes to Food (2.06% of sales), Crosswords (2.03%), Music (1.84%) and Teenager (0.62%). It would be easy to blame this on your shoppers. Your challenge as a retailer is to look at where you have them placed and how you promote them.- NEWSPAPERS. Unit sales are down 14% and revenue down 9%. The unit sales decline is the real worry as it’s worse than the overall average for the business.
- SCRATCH TICKETS. A 27% decline in sales is dreadful. The traditional decline I am seeing in Queensland is around 15% so your business is performing worse that the statewide trend. The question is what are you doing about this. A shopkeeper will shrug their shoulders. A retailer will work on an action plan and then implement the action plan.
- STATIONERY. This is a good news department. Your sales are down 10%, slightly less than the average for the business. While not good, at least it is close to the average for your business. In this department again you have Assorted as a category. This is useless. It accounts for 41.60% of sales and we can’t further assess this. Pens, Pencils and Markers is the next big category at 11.07% of sales. They declined only 5% and this is excellent news. What are you doing there as it is working better than for other products? You should talk to your GNS rep and ask them to conduct a review of your stationery. They could guide you to relay stationery to tell a better retail story.
With non lottery product sales of $300K for the quarter and an average of 3,600 sales transacted each week you have a sound business base. What happens from here is up to you. If this were me I’d be urgently overhauling my approach to key traffic driver categories in the business:Lotto, magazines, stationery and cards. I’d engage with suppliers for help. I’d also develop a series of plans for change in the business to give customers a fresh experience. Once I had that where I wanted it I’d promote the business externally. I can’t stress enough the importance of external promotion of the business.
The best business growth is that achieved over time through a series of small steps: a small bump in traffic, a small bump in the average spend and a small bump in the margin you achieve on the items you price for yourself.
I appreciate you’ve not even been in the business for a year. Since it’s your money invested, the future of the business comes down to you. Get your data right, set your focus on a plan and get cracking on that plan.
Let me know if I can help in any way.
Target is advertising the Robo Fish to $8 toy I wrote about here at the weekend. We sold through all our stock at full price – $15 a unit. While the Target volumes will be higher our achievement is better as it is down to our retail skills rather that falling back on price alone.
I know mass-merchants like Target will continue to discount much of what they sell as this is their only trick. I hope that more suppliers will realise the damage discounting to their brands and that they pull back from mass and focus more on us independent retailers.
Our success at full price with Robo Fish and other brand releases I have written about here is proof of what newsagents can achieve.