We are giving Crikey! magazine a shot in the spotlight at the moment with this placement above our weeklies. This simple move will dramatically increase the eyeballs passing across the title and thereby hopefully lift sales.
We often find a simple move like this, undertaken in a minute or so, can get us a couple of additional copies sold. This supports my position that we newsagents can grow magazine sales – with a bit of extra effort in-store.
Feast magazine continues to attract good sales in the food category. While some high-profile titles are struggling this year in my stores, Feast is performing well. I think this is because the magazine is a faithful to its roots – the SBS Food Safari program.
Our sales are probably helped by good support for the title in prime position in with food titles. We also co-locate where and when we can through the on-sale.
I have heard of several newsagents who have decided to not run Halloween this year because of the strong engagement in the season by a nearby supermarket – usually a Coles or Woolworths – last year.
Rather than seeking out Halloween product not sold in the supermarkets, the newsagents I have heard from and or about appear to have given up. We have to fight for business, every day. Yes, it’s hard work. But we must. We can’t let the supermarkets win because of fear!
I have seen the Halloween offers at Coles and Woolworths. They are focused on candy – with some terrific displays – and a limited range of cheap Halloween items like witches hats and some make up items. Neither has what I’d consider to be a full Halloween line. Indeed, I see plenty of opportunities not competing with them.
With several supermarkets near my newsagencies this is what we are doing – focusing on products they don’t have. We’re happy with the results so far – good early sales.
The glitter pumpkins in the photo are the hero of Halloween so far. They attract attention. They work at home or in the office. They take Halloween to a new level – they also make it more accessible. Once we realised this we ordered heaps more. Selling out early in the season is a great reason to get more stock and see how far we can go.
I understand how frustrating it is when a major competes in a season you used to have to yourself. It’s not a reason to give up though. We are retailers, small business retailers, newsagents – just about the toughest type of retailers out there given what we have put up with.
The Australian Financial Review today has a fascinating article about the Alan Jones story through the context of old media versus new media. I am particularly interested to see that advertisers don’t consider advertising as an endorsement of the performer their ads are connected with. My take is: welcome to the new consumer empowered world. Social media gives people more power and the Jones story is showing how the power can be harnessed.
I love the floor unit for the Christmas Beanie Kid range. Shopper reaction is that it’s not too early to have this on the newsagency shop floor – I thought it might have been given that we are full up with halloween, diaries and calendars and only have 135 sq m to play with. We have the unit placed to interrupt flow and it’s working a treat – it’s part of our basket building work to drive basket depth.
We are embracing the arrival of Autumn in Melbourne (on some days) as an opportunity to get our Australian Women’s Weekly cookbooks out from their usual location and in front of more shoppers. We have a selection of the most popular titles placed next to the cake decorating partwork – both of which are next to our photocopier.
Just about every shopper approaching our sales counter passes this position – more than the shoppers who would get to where the cookbooks are usually located.
We try and bring a selection of these cookbooks out into front of shop locations at least four times a year.
Like a lot of newsagents, we place diaries published under a magazine brand with the magazine and in the category appropriate. We also locate stock of these diaries in our diary department. While the co-location works well, it is this placement with magazines that drives early in the season sales.
With all the media coverage given to Arnold Schwarzenegger over the last week it made sense to us to give this issue of Men’s Fitness full cover display treatment. Newsagents should check where they are their copy – make sure the full cover can be seen. If we had the space we would give this issue of Men’s Fitness a shot with newspapers as I am sure it would sell there … that space is in high demand at the moment.
Over the weekend I ran a survey here, asking newsagents how many hours they worked in their business. The collation of the 137 responses shows, not unsurprisingly, that most work significantly more than an average working week. Here are the numbers:
Politicians need to understand the time we all invest in our businesses and consider this as they develop polices. While some businesses owners will always work long hours others will happily transfer some of their hours to employees if the conditions are right.
Newsagent suppliers need to look at these figures and consider how they can help newsagents save time. For example XchangeIT ought to deliver on magazine statement reconciliation. magazine distributors ought to give newsagents control over supply and thereby reduce the time we spend on processing returns.
There are many areas where newsagents could save time and thereby achieve a better work / life balance than available with some of today’s archaic processes.
Thanks to the 137 newsagents who voted. Given the percentage of newsagents represented I think the results represent the industry average.
Tic Tac Australia & New Zealand has more than 226,000 fans on Facebook. Their Facebook page is awash with coverage of the new, for a limited time only, green apple tic tacs. It’s a fun and engaging campaign – with Facebook fans having voted for this flavour to be manufactured.
TV channels are carrying plenty of advertising for green apple tic tacs.
I know from recent advertising in Convenience World magazine that year on year sales of tic tacs are up 11.2% and that 47% of shoppers want new flavours. This suggests the recently released green apple product will be a hit.
How the tic tac people are using Facebook and other platforms is a lesson on social media engagement. It is also an opportunity to leverage their leadership for our own benefit. Retailers who connect with the tic tac social media campaign can drive traffic for themselves and create their own local success.
I saw an excellent lift in one of my newsagencies when I leveraged social media coverage around One Direction … and it cost nothing. Why not do the same with tic tacs? While some newsagents will say there is no time, if you could have your message seen by 260K+ people why not invest the time?!
By leveraging I mean engaging on their Facebook page and through their Twitter feed – reaching our to existing tic tac fans. In each case you would need to engage with content that is complimentary to what they post. This is what I did with One Direction and it worked a treat.
Whether it is tic tacs or other major social media engaged brands, there are excellent social media opportunities for newsagents beyond our own Facebook page or Twitter feed – opportunities we can turn into traffic for our businesses and sales through our registers.
Our sales of Country Update are patchy so we’re making them most of the Keith Urban cover shot on the latest issue by placing this with our weekly magazines. regulars here will know that this has worked for us before – placing relatively obscure titles with weeklies when they feature a cover subject with everyday appeal. Since urban’s appearance on The Voice on the Nine Network his popularity has risen – hopefully enough for us to sell this magazine to people who might otherwise not know about it. Every extra sale counts!
Click here and answer a one-question survey. As of this morning we have 100 responses.
Go to Google and search on magazines and your suburb. Dopes your business come up on the first page? Do the same for: ink, greeting cards and stationery. How dod you fare in these searches?
If you are not coming up on the first page you’re not where you need to be. This can be fixed by completing entries in a number of free listing sites and maintaining these.
If you are in a marketing group get their advice on what to do, they should have pre-prepared advice for you. If you are not in a marketing group email me at mark@towersystems.com.au and I’ll privately share advice with you.
Yes, it will take a couple of hours to get your information into the listing sites – the result will be your business coming up in search results. I was at a conference recently where they said that more than 70% of in-store purchases involved at least some form of online search or engagement.
One way to achieve a better margin for products you sell is to take the settlement discount whenever possible. Many newsagent suppliers offer this yet the majority of newsagents do not take it.
I have heard of newsagents not taking a 20% settlement discount – preferring 30 day terms. You could pay the bill on time with your credit card, take the 20% and be better off. This doesn’t make sense to me. In one business I looked at recently, they could have added more than $6,000 in a year to their bottom line profit by taking settlement discounts. Who wouldn’t want $6,000 extra profit?
We are promoting the 20th anniversary edition of Who magazine in several locations including with newspapers this weekend. This issue has a stunning cover – it stands out in each of the locations: at the counter, with newspapers and in with our weekly magazine titles. This is a title all newsagents should be promoting this weekend!
Here is a one question survey for newsagents: How many hours do you work in your newsagency? If there is more than one owner in the business, please have each respond. I’ll share the results here.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
Kind of in line with a trend I have talked about here when reporting sales growth for regional and foreign language newspapers, a report out of the US is predicting growth for small circa. newspapers. Specialisation is a good business plan for newsagents who want to remain true to the historic core of the business.
Newsagents like consistency if nothing else and when things do not happen as usual they (we) are thrown. The lack of a delivery from Gotch yesterday is a case in point. Several newsagents called me asking if I knew what had gone wrong. I let them know that they needed to read the Gotch website announcement.
We are promoting the latest issue of marie claire magazine with this display facing onto the dance floor, capping the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle.
We have taken care to protect the Dermalogica product attached to the magazine – to ensure that the gift really does look like a premium gift. This display in the photo and placement in the usual location for marie claire shows off the gift.
We are promoting the latest issue of Top Gear magazine with this display facing into our men’s magazine reading area.
This placement along with a waterfall display give the current issue plenty of support in-store. We will also give the issue a push in an impulse display next to our photocopier for the weekend – to catch guys who don’t venture beyond half-way in.
I was fortunate to be one of twelve at an Australian Retailers Association lunch with Senator Eric Abetz, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, yesterday. The lunch was held under the Chatham House Rule and so I can’t go into the detail of what was discussed. that said, it was terrific to have another opportunity to talk directly with a federal politician about newsagents and some of the challenges we face that those in Canberra can influence.
The hot topic was penalty rates. Plenty of the retailers around the table representing footware, music, bakery and services shared the concerns of newsagents about the cost of labour on our businesses on Sundays in this 24/7 world – a world government had helped create.
The more politicians who hear stories about challenges newsagents face the better.
Earlier this week someone commented on a post on this blog that they had been blocked from getting XchangeIT invoices by their software company because they had decided to not take up software support coverage.
It frustrates me that a newsagency software would block a newsagent from accessing business-critical magazine invoice data.
The software company involved should not block access. XchangeIT should not allow it to happen.
If a newsagent has software that meets XchangeIT standards they ought to be able to load data from any external source. If they need support from their software company to address any issue and are not covered by support then, by all means, charge them. But to charge just to get the data – this is poor behaviour that reflects badly on all software companies.
Yes I am conflicted, I own Tower Systems. I’m lucky in that our market share of 1,800 newsagents positions us to not have to rely on pressuring newsagents by blocking XchangeIT access to those who do not maintain software support. But we created our position over many years.
Newsagents have enough challenges in their businesses. They should not be forced to pay for a software support service if they don’t want it.
Software companies should rely on their customer loving their software and their support enough to keep them in business.
I feel for UK newsagents who have been hit with a new £8.50 delivery charge by Menzies Distribution following them taking on titles previously delivered direct to newsagents by News International. The Grocer has the story.
Unfortunately, I think we can expect to see moves like this as product manufacturers who previously supplied many accounts directly move to a model of supplying fewer accounts and expecting these businesses to manage newsagent accounts. The moves in Adelaide I wrote about yesterday are an example.
Being across the moves in the UK is something those representing newsagents ought to pursue. Some aspects of T2020 can be found in the UK model. I wonder how much that was looked at over the last two and a half years we have known of T2020.
While most magazine retailers treat their products as SKUs, we take care, moving stock around, leveraging opportunities we see as relevant to our shoppers. Food titles present this opportunity often. Take the current issues of donna hay and Cuisine. Both have terrific, delicious, covers – the best of current food titles we have in-store. We have made sure to place them at the front of the food section, at almost shoulder level – so the delicious food can be easily seen. Whereas supermarkets put titles in their design ate spot, we will place a title based on where this issue will work best for us and our customers.
I was premature in calling the current issue of Rolling Stone with Pink on the cover an opportunity for us. I was surprised to notice that our stock in-store is bagged. This is nuts for music titles as browsing is important to driving purchases. You only have to stand in a newsagency and watch the browsing of music titles to notice this. When I was checking it out yesterday a customer looked at the title – we chatted about the title being bagged and he agreed and expressed frustration. I understand why it’s bagged and that the publisher expects to achieve incremental sales from the extra value. My feeling is that this is not ideal for a music magazine.