A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Author: Mark Fletcher

News Limited IT failure impacts newsagent customer service

Check out the email to distribution newsagents in Queensland from News Limited:

Dear Newsagent

We recently discovered holiday stops from the subscriber website were not being transferred into our system from November 17th to December 16th 2012.

As a result of this problem you did not receive any notification from News Queensland to suspend newspapers for some customers during this time.

The credit that was to be applied to your account for the papers that would have been delivered during this period was unfortunately debited to your account dated week ending 23/12/2012.  To rectify this, your account for the week ending 30/12/2012 will have two credits applied, the first to reverse the incorrectly debited amount, the second to apply the appropriate credit.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.  If you have any queries please contact your area sales manager or Circulation on 1800 648 591.

Circulation
News Queensland

I feel for the newsagents and the challenges the News Limited failure would have caused for them.

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Newsagency management

One Direction gives at Christmas

One Direction, the manufactured boy band from the UK, has delivered us an excellent christmas gifts with amazing sales of calendars, cards, scrapbooks, pencils, folders, puzzle books and magazines.

I really thought 1D sales would peter out at christmas but this has not happened. indeed, sales have jumped.

Having the best 1D range in the centre has helped. On Christmas Every one girl spotted our range and brought friends. These are current Dolly & Girlfriend shoppers and future frankie shoppers. While many 1D shoppers look only at 1D product, others browse and purchase other items.

The 1D phenomenon is a reminder of the importance of spotting trends early, leveraging multiple supplier relationships to make the most of the opportunity and using appropriate media – social media in this case – to promote the products and attract new traffic.

We have punched way above our weight with this product, attracting many new shoppers because of our range of product and commitment to the One Direction band. I am confident we could have done as well outside a major shopping centre.

Newsagents can attract new traffic and through this reinforce their relevance to Australians of all ages.

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Gifts

Very happy to have veri.live magazine in stork

veri.live is another special interest magazine title we have added to our range thanks to IPS. It’s a magazine for lovers of independent music. It fits well in the Melbourne music scene.

Carrying veri.live on our shelves shows our interest in and support for independent music. Without wanting to offend anyone, it’s kind of a frankie of music titles.

Taking on this title is another step in our goal of expanding our range special interest titles from IPS. I like that I can choose the titles and determine the quantity I wish to receive.

Check out the veri live page at IPS here. This is the page the publishers point people interested in the title to. Note the newsagency locator – it’s brilliant.

4 likes
magazines

The Twilight Zone between Christmas and New Year

For businesses used to having fresh product in-store, newsagencies would be feeling less than fresh today with thin newspapers, bumper editions of papers and magazines and not the usual three times a week magazine delivery.

It’s a bit Twilight Zone like … a perfect opportunity to consider changes for 2013 as we face the challenges and opportunities of falling newspaper and magazine sales.

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Newsagency management

Update on a the secondary plush move

A while back I wrote about our decision to create a secondary plush location in the middle of our stationery department. We needed to fill this gap until we made some other shop floor moves and to accommodate plush we could not fit into our plush department.

What was a stop-gap move has worked a treat. Sales from this spot in the photo have been excellent. Even the two rows down the bottom have been selling which is amazing given that we have these items in a spinner in the plush department.

The success of this spot is a reminder that breaking with rules and traditions is often good for business. It is also a reminder that shoppers do browse and purchase on impulse based on what they discover in-store. This spot is over half-way into the store and on the other side of the shop to our cards and gifts.

Footnote: Plush is now a separate department for us. We report on it separately and track its performance against key related departments – gifts and cards. What was once a seasonal focus is now key to our business plans for 2013 and beyond.

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Plush

Another example of calendars with magazines

We have had stock of our remaining tattoo themed calendar, Lady Ink, with our tattoo magazine titles. This is where those interested in tattoo related products will browse the most.

The nature of today’s newsagency is such that success will come from many small steps rather than one or two much bigger steps.

Obsessively chasing special interests, like tattoos, is what will deliver in return traffic and deeper baskets.

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Calendars

Boxing Day Sale posters

Click here for a PDF of a blue Boxing Day Sale poster. Click here for a PDF of a red Boxing Day Sale poster. The artwork was created by my newsagency software company for free use by any newsagent.

Boxing Day is expected to be huge in Victoria this year. It’s a market where the Boxing Day Sale tradition has been around for many years. We embrace it with gusto. We bring in some stock especially. We dress the store. We aggressive mark down the items we want to move.

The keys with any Boxing Day Sale are:

  1. Offer genuine bargains.
  2. Go out with your best offers right away.
  3. Make the price easy to understand (half price is easier than 50% for some shoppers).
  4. Quit old stock, keep marking down to move products with speed.
  5. Know what is next for the space and the business.
  6. Give the shoppers you attract a reason to come back … a flyer or a coupon to entice then to return.

Boxing Day success depends on excellent and timely shop floor management, making decisions to move stock based on placement and price. It’s hard delivering, usually, good rewards.

4 likes
newsagency marketing

Analysts talk up News post split.

Anyone interested in News Corp. and how the company will look as it splits into two should read the article at PaidContent, the Bloomberg article and the Reuters article at Huffington Post.  While the latest results for News aren’t great for print, including Australian newspapers, they say the upside is good post-split.

Crikey has a more more detailed and local perspective on the latest results and split including this:

Like Fairfax in Australia and Gannett in the US, News Corp is hostage to the advertising sector. The Australian pay TV businesses — 100% of Fox Sports, 50% of Foxtel and 44% of Sky in NZ — won’t be enough to offset this weakness, nor will the Australian digital real estate business, the Harper Collins publishing entity (which is facing pressures of its own from e-books) or the nascent education business called Amplify.

And this:

For the three-month period to September 30, new News Corp relied on advertising for 48% of that $US2.13 billion in revenues, with 28.5% coming from circulation and subscription income. In total, more than 78% of revenues for the quarter came from the traditional analogue media sources (82% in the same quarter of 2011). Newspaper revenues fell 6% or $US102 million from the September quarter of 2011 to the same quarter this year.

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Newspapers

Stunning Time magazine cover

The latest issue of Time magazine, the Person of the Year issue, looks stunning. We have positioned the issue so the whole cover is on show, thereby giving it a better opportunity to sell.

This is an issue for the non-traditional Time magazine customer. We are chasing them with our placement. I’d note that the supply boost for this issue makes sense.

1 likes
magazines

I love last minute Christmas shoppers, especially guys

They have a look of fear in their eyes and an ADHD approach to shopping. Yes, I’m talking about the last minute Christmas shopper, those who leave Christmas shopping to the very last minute.

While they first appear a few days before Christmas, these last minute Christmas shoppers shine the day before Christmas. They are fun to watch, a delight to serve (because they are thankful to have made a purchase) and valuable to our businesses.

I have seen these shoppers today, plenty of them – most spending up big. I chatted with one – he leaves it to the last minute for the thrill of it. The way he explained it, he gets a bigger buzz out of only having a couple of hours available to buy for ten people. He said he even likes it if shoppers give him some attitude. Seriously. That’s some fetish.

The last minute shopping we have seen today and indeed the last few days is a reminder of the value of having a broad offer, holding the line on margin and providing an efficient shopping experience.

This has been a terrific Christmas season.

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Newsagency opportunities

Burke’s Backyard to close

Bauer announced last week that Burke’s Backyard magazine is to close. With sales falling it was only a matter of time.

It’s interesting that garden magazines do not appear to benefit from a strong interest in gardening. Garden centres and nurseries are doing bumper trade so Australians are spending in this area, just not on magazines like they used to. That said, Better Homes and Gardens remains very strong.

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magazines

Tyro beats bank EFTPOS at the counter

While the Commonwealth Bank has been spending up big promoting fast settlement of EFTPOS transactions for retailers, they have done nothing speed up transactions at the counter from what I can see. A colleague waited two minutes last week for a Comm. Bank EFTPOS unit to dial, connect and approve a transaction. Shoppers leave when such delays occur at busy times. I know from my own experience in my own newsagencies in this very busy Christmas period that I can process an EFTPOS transaction on Tyro in seconds. Ne delays for customers, no delays for me. This helps me make more money. The Comm. bank advertising is useless unless they find their throughput bottleneck. Tyro links to newsagency software systems.

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EFTPOS fees

Cool magazine for wannabe music DJs

I was able to pitch this magazine, How to DJ, to a shopper yesterday who was looking for a gift for his son who was into music and nothing else. He needed something extra. The guy liked the magazine as it showed he understood his son’s passion.

It’s pretty cool when we can demonstrate our relevance like this – by having a personal conversation that helps someone validate themselves. It’s a magazine specialist newsagent point of difference and reinforces the, for me at least, the value of this category  in our newsagencies for years to come.

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magazines

Barnes & Noble giving ebooks away

US book retailer is running an interesting promotion, giving away an ebook with each purchase of an ebook from a list of selected titles. It’s an in-store offer, potentially driving store traffic. paidContent has more on this story.

Book retailing is facing extraordinary challenges, even for those playing in the digital space as Barnes & Noble are finding.

1 likes
Book retailing

A kind of okay ad stuck on the front page of a newspaper

Since I bang on here about ads covering newspaper mastheads and main stories, I thought it appropriate to publish this photo of a kind of okay ad stuck on the front page of the Sunday Mail in Adelaide yesterday.

While the stuck-on ad encroaches on the masthead you can easily see title. It also does not get in the way of the main page one story. It’s a placement that works if you must have an ad stuck on the front page of the newspaper.

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newspaper masthead desecration

Newsagency marketing tip: leveraging knowledge for value

Something to think about for marketing your newsagency next year. What knowledge do you have that adds value to what you sell that, in turn, makes shopping with you more valuable.

While other shops sell magazines, cards and stationery, we have a personal connection with our products and our customers. We need to find more ways to show this off, to promote our personal point of difference.  This starts with us leveraging knowledge.

While Officeworks, for example, spends considerable sums advertising customer service, newsagents can go a step further and actually deliver it on the shop floor … many do this every day already.

I think retail in 2013 will depend more on points of difference that are valuable to shoppers. We can excel in this compared to major retailers. Value is what will bring shoppers back.

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marketing tip

Newsagency management tip: take a visual view of your roster

A visual representation of your roster can help create a more efficient allocation of employee resources. Good roster software should be included in your newsagency management software. Use this to review shift allocation with a view to developing the best roster structure for your business. I know of newsagents who have gone from a manual approach to a visual, drag and drop, approach and saved over $100 a week from seeing inefficiencies they had missed.

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Management tip

Promoting calendars with magazines

With magazine sales exceptionally strong in the lead up to Christmas we have had some spare space for the last couple of days we have filled with calendars. We selected calendars based on the placement below weekly titles. It’s worked with some calendars having been purchased from here.  Moving stock around, filling spaces, leveraging high traffic items – it’s what delivers icing on the cake in this last week before Christmas.

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Calendars

What’s next?

Okay, so the world did not end. We had a bit of a laugh yesterday. Customers joined in the sprit. It was a good break from the last minute Christmas shopping stress.

The buzz around the so-called Mayan predictions has left me thinking even more about the need for change. While I don’t believe in the predictions of catastrophe, I have no doubt that newsagency businesses (retail and delivery) and retail more broadly are experiencing extraordinary change. Some big.  Some small.

Over the next few weeks I plan to take the Newsagency of the Future workshop material I have used this year and add to this the latest research and data insights and create a fresh new workshop for newsagents on steps we can take to own our businesses.

14 likes
Newsagency management

Making the most of the Angry Birds opportunity

We are promoting the Angry Birds 2013 calendar with our other Angry Birds products including this plush – just as we have been doing for Moshi Monsters. This placement makes a stronger pitch for the brand and helps shoppers purchase more items in each basket.

On this focus on driving basket depth, our year to date data reports we are achieving a 9% increase in average basket size this year over last year. A valuable result.

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Calendars

Serving Android phone users

We’re happy to have this range of Android titles in-store right now. With gadgets like mobile phones popular again this year for Christmas, magazines like these are a good add of or for other family members to give. We’re leveraging the opportunity by making sure that we have all Android titles placed together.

4 likes
magazines

Wary of For Arts Sake loyalty program for newsagents

The terms and conditions of the loyalty program being launched by For Arts Sake indicate that newsagents need to have broadband and install a device to feed scanned sales data of items sold to FAS.

All data goes to FAS.  This could breach supplier agreements including magazine agreements. It could also give FAS data about a business that the business may not want FAS to get.  I suggest newsagents get professional advice before signing.

Basket data is valuable to newsagents. The moment they allow basket data to leave their business the opportunity for them to leverage value is diminished.

A device like this was mooted with newsagents five or so years ago. It was knocked on the head then because of the same data and contractual issues.

The email from FAS promoting the opportunity gushes. It includes…

No other supplier in the Newsagent industry has ever developed such a program to help support and grow their retailers business.

This is the BIGGEST opportunity for Newsagents since Lotto was introduced in 1974.

My experience is that both statements are not accurate. Caveat emptor.

11 likes
Ethics
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