Author: Mark Fletcher

I was disappointed to hear from the Bauer owned Ticketek that they were taking our Ticketek agency business from us and giving it to Westfield. This was happening because our centre recently switched from AMP to Westfield.

While Ticketek was within their rights in terms of the contract, it disappoints me that a key supplier to newsagencies and my landlord can do this.

We had served Ticketek well, building excellent sales for their brand in the centre, delivering an excellent service for major and smaller events.  We opened long hours – far longer than I expect the centre management desk to offer.

Why Ticketek agreed to the Westfield deal years ago is beyond me – especially with them knowing that many newsagents offered Ticketek.

My disappointment at the move escalated when the landlord had the gall to place a sign right in the front of our store on the weekend promoting Ticketek now being located elsewhere. It was a reminder that big businesses take care of their own.

Newsagents have been notified that Woman’s Day is coming our this Friday, three days early. There has been no announcement from Bauer or network services. Newsagents found out because they have received the electronic invoice already.

I could be wrong but I doubt the interest in Jennifer Hawkins’ wedding justifying the effort and challenges of going on sale three days early.

Newsagents currently have three magazines on our shelves with sachets of Uncle Tobys oats stuck inside. The free pack of oats makes each magazine fatter than usual, requiring more shelf and or storage space and taking up more time to manage.

This is why newsagents should be paid extra – to cover the extra space and time involved.

Just as General Mills will be paying the publisher of each magazine – including Bauer for Australian Women’s Weekly – a premium for the thick ‘ad’, newsagents should be paid a premium. It’s only fair.

The challenge is we don’t have a relationship with General Mills. We rely on publishers and distributors. However, when it comes to thicker than usual magazines I’m not aware of them thinking about us and the extra services they expect us to provide.

This issue is something newsagent associations could usefully spend time on, negotiating fees for extra services such as thick magazines, heavy magazines and magazines that do not meet minimum performance criteria such as a 50% sell through.

The current approach of taking extra space and time from us without compensation is unfair. It disadvantages us over most of our competitors on the magazine retail space.

While I’ve left the oats sachets in the magazines in my newsagencies I know of some others who have removed them. I can understand that, especially for titles they would usually try and flat stack. You can’t do that with the current issue of AWW.

I groaned when I noticed the UK edition of Grazia on our shelves. The Australian edition had not performed well for us – and others based on its closure. We’re onto our third issue of the UK edition and, surprise surprise, it’s going okay.

I was all set to early return the copy I found on the shelf and contact Gotch to cancel supply. However, selling two copies of the three we have been sent for the first two issues caused me to not be hasty in cancelling this title.  Acting without checking would have been wrong. I could have ended up losing sales of two, maybe more, copies a week for a year.

At two copies a week its paying its way for us.

I think part of the success is due to clever placement by one of our team members with UK titles. It makes sense when you think about it.

We’re at a 75% sell through of the My Kitchen Rules cookbook with sales close to 50 units. We have achieved this from placement with food magazines, a couple of weeks with weeklies and the shop floor placement shown in the photo – next to the impulse Better Homes and Gardens stand.

These TV show tie-in one shots can be a challenge. There’s something to be said for going hard early in several locations on the shop floor.

The latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens has taken off thanks to the Italian feature and our placement in four locations in-store: with weeklies, newspapers, usual location and floor unit in front of store.  We’ll support this for the next week in these four locations and then pull back to the usual two locations – regular spot and newspapers.

Better Homes and Gardens is our top selling magazine by far. It responds well to promotional support.