We have been promoting the latest issue of marie claire with this column based display at our Frankston store. In addition to this feature display facing our dance floor, we have the title located in our women’s magazine section. Like all good feature displays, it is easy for our customers to purchase right off the column. We choose titles for these displays based on what we see as their opportunity for cut through. This so often depends on the cover.
A rumour has reached me claiming that an Australian iPad only business and current affairs magazine will launch early in 2011. While I have no idea if the rumour is true, such a move would be interesting.
I first published this advice to the 1,700+ newsagents using the newsagency software from Tower Systems a few weeks ago. I publish it here because of the concerning number of recent thefts in newsagencies.
With sales up and cash in the business up, Christmas time is the time for newsagents to be more vigilant than ever in managing cash. From taking care at the counter in customer interaction to ensuring honesty of employees, now is the time to revisit processes to ensure that the business is protected.
Yes, some of these measures take time. The financial saving from greater vigilance to the business could be considerable. Christmas in retail is a time of higher than usual risk.
Take care. If I can help in any way, please contact me.
The Julian Assange cover of Time magazine presents newsagents with a perfect opportunity to achieve excellent incremental business with this title. We have it placed prominently with newspapers. His arrest in London and the controversy around the WikiLeaks have ensured that Assange is easily recognised. This is another example of the attention we need to give to magazine covers. Covers like this one on Time magazine can drive sales.
Other retailers of magazines are unlikely to be tactical in placement based on a cover. This is another way we can demonstrate our point of difference.
We received Performance Car Heroes yesterday for the first time. The only way to fit this title in our trimmed down magazine department is to take another title off. I decided against that and early returned Performance Car Heroes. Had I been asked if I wanted this title I would have declined in our current location. What happened here with this title is a perfect example of anti competitive behaviour. Newsagents are the only magazine channel treated in this way. The lack of flexibility we have makes us less competitive.
Oprah on the front cover of the latest issue of Mindfood magazine earns this low volume magazine prime position with our women’s monthlies. Oprah’s in Australia in case you have been living under a rock. Maybe she can help achieve some incremental business for us. I’ll watch how the title performs – if we see movement by the weekend we will give it some more premium space time.
I am a big fan of newsagents putting out magazines when they arrive in-store. This way tactical decisions can be made based on the cover or some other opportunity with this issue of a title.
We are promoting the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens with this in-location display, a six pocket placement with weeklies as well as a stack next to our top selling newspapers. We will pare back this to two locations after the weekend – the in-location as well as with weeklies. BHG sells well to the weekly magazine shopper. Being very tight on space we have to engage in these tactical moves rather than the billboard type displays you see in many newsagencies.
Magazine publishers and distributors could learn a valuable lesson from Australian calendar publishers and distributors.
For years now we (and a couple of hundred newsagents) have carefully selected the wide calendar range we carry. Each year we achieve double digit growth. We carry the risk with a firm sale commitment and work the commitment hard by ordering carefully, managing floorstock, refreshing the displays and ensuring excellent customer service around out point of difference.
Calendar publishers are happy. Customers are happy. We are happy.
We and plenty of other newsagents are showing that a commercial and respectful relationship between publisher and retailer works.
We are achieving what magazine publishers and distributors say is not achievable with magazines in the newsagency channel. We are demonstrating that we have the capacity to manage our title range and product volume to the benefit of all stakeholders.
Any magazine publisher keen to break out of the out of date magazine distribution model and form a commercial and direct relationship with newsagents should look carefully at the calendar model. It works.
Fake $50 notes have been reported as circulating in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne this week. Click here for advice from the Reserve Bank on the security features in Australian notes. The fake I have seen is very good and easily passed at a busy counter. Take care.
We are promoting the Justin Beiber 2011 calendar in a high traffic location to connect with the heightened interest this week thanks to tickets going on sale for his first Australian concert tour. Molly Meldrum said on the weekend that the Bieber concert would be reminiscent of the 1960s tour by the Beatles. Who knows? What I do know is that Bieber has plenty of fans and their parents, friends and relatives needs gift ideas for Christmas. Hence our prominent display of this calendar.
The Ned Kelly house syndicate run by newsXpress Beechworth has won Tattslotto twice in the last year. Talk about lucky! And perfectly named – for a winning Syndicate and in Beechworth, the heart of Kelly country.
Former Fairfax executive Eric Beecher wrote in Crikey yesterday about the sudden departure of the Fairfax CEO Brian McCarthy on Monday. Eric’s commentary included:
There are two key elements at the heart of what happened at Fairfax yesterday, and has been unravelling for the past 10 years. First, no one knows the right answers to the existential threats to old media because many of the answers have yet to be invented. And second, in order to position yourself to find the answers you need to be competent, knowledgeable, intuitive, flexible and honest about what you don’t know.
Fairfax is none of those things. It is a dysfunctional company led by an incompetent board chaired by a former retailer, Roger Corbett, whose answer to the crisis afflicting newspapers is to sprout generalities such as “revenue streams of the future are all very challenging but we will be working to ensure that we deliver the very best” and “the really important thing is that we provide quality journalism that people actually want”.
Unlike Rupert Murdoch, whose local media arm has not just revelled in reporting Fairfax’s antics for a decade but is ruthlessly turning the commercial screws on their hapless competitor every day, the Fairfax chairman — the de facto “proprietor” in a company without an owner — doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and has no instinct for media at the precise moment that his company desperately needs such a person at the helm.
The truth is that “quality journalism” (whatever that means) or the “very best” is not enough. The solutions to the future of newspapers such as the Herald and The Age lie in their business models, not just in their journalism. And given the rapidity of their decline — each has seen its annual profits fall from about $100 million to about $20 million in the past few years — the solution is almost certainly no longer incremental, but seminal.
None of us knows how the disruption to print media will shake out. What we do know that the waves of change are far from over. This is why we newsagents need business and shop fit models which are as flexible as the business model needed for Fairfax and other publishers.
I was speaking with a newsagent yesterday who spends $400 a month freighting unsold magazine stock back to Gordon & Gotch and Network Services.
How much do you spend on freight for magazine returns?
If you drive the returns back yourself, cost travel at 63 cents per kilometre plus $30 an hour for your time.
I have heard that the Fairfax has purchased NDD’s shares in XchangeIT along with some assets and is working toward implementing XchangeIT support for their portfolio of magazines. This will take some time to establish as there is considerable IT infrastructure at their end to setup and maintain. They are also yet to address issues like direct supply to retail newsagents who had direct with NDD accounts.
Our decision to promote the latest issue of Quarterly Essay has paid off. We will sell out this week. Plenty of purchases have been on impulse. A $19.95 impulse purchase is very nice. I hope other newsagents are promoting this issue near newspapers, full face.
The covers of The Monthly magazine have been a stand out feature of the title since it launched. They provided an excellent reason to promote the title in a high traffic location. While I am no expert on magazine cover design, the latest issue of The Monthly looks boring, very mainstream. I don’t feel compelled to place this in a high traffic impulse location because of the cover. That said, we are supporting the title by placing it near our daily newspapers. I say, bring back the cover style of year ago and older.
The latest issue of 4X4 Australia has sold very well in a couple of my stores. 90% sell-through in three days. I would like to say that it is something we did but I can’t. The magazine is in its usual location, as the hero product of the 4X4 segment. Maybe it’s just that it is Christmas. Magazine sales overall are up this past week compared to the average of recent weeks.
Brian McCarthy resigned today as CEO of Fairfax. Fairfax watchers have been expecting moves or some sort as the company is publicly and privately coming to terms with its future in a digital (versus) paper world.
Just this morning, Mark Day, writing in The Australian, had a warranted crack at the financials for The Age. While the McCarthy resignation appears unrelated. The tensions at the newspaper and Fairfax more widely are connected with the same topic – the future of the print newspapers.
Newsagents can look at this as interested bystanders. Or, we can consider more thoroughly the same questions the folks are Fairfax are wrestling with.
The weekend edition of The Australian Financial Review (page 4) had a report on the state of health of lad magazines. It was comparing the decline in sales of Ralph (now closed – sort of) and Zoo Weekly (steep decline) with Men’s Health (tiny increase). The article closes with the conclusion that intelligent content is king.
While the report was interesting, I think is missed the opportunity to look at sales of other categories and growth titles including motor vehicle titles like Top Gear and even MasterChef which we have found to be popular among men.
Five days after moving the Junior MasterChef mook stand near to the entrance to the store we have sold more than 50% of our stock. My feeling is that we will sell out by the end of this week. This is an excellent outcome. It is also a lesson to some of the newsagents who said it would not sell. I say some because in some country towns I can understand that the traffic is not there for volume. However, we cannot underestimate the appeal of the MasterChef brand and the Junior MasterChef sub brand. This was always a product to put in a high traffic location, preferably with other Junior MasterChef branded product.
I was surprised that we did not receive this Ashes mini-bat and player card collection until Friday last week. We are already into the second test!
Based on sales of Ashes related magazines I would have thought that the best time to get this product to newsagents was at least four weeks ago. The other issue is the lack of marketing collateral. The only way to make this product work, without decent collateral, is to place it at the counter. It’s Christmas so counter space is more in demand than ever.
I would not be surprised if newsagents decide to return the stock unopened.
We moved this display of the Hoops and YoYo gift lines to the front of the store on Friday for the weekend and the impact was immediate.
Not only was the product selling, it was attracting shoppers as they walked past us in the mall. Kids are women are particularly attracted to this range based on what I observed – they love that these products are interactive. I love the new traffic the range is drawing.
While we cannot give everything we sell time at the front of the store facing into the mall, we have enough well known and popular brands with which to attract passers-by.
It was terrific to see paperboy Rob McGregor featured in the Herald Sun on Friday as well as online. Robbie (as I knew him) has worked for seven owners of newsXpress Pakenham – one of the early owners was the Bishop family. I worked for the Bishops in 1970 and 1971 after school. Back then, as I am sure is the case today, Robbie was your ideal paperboy – on time, accurate and cheerful.
Rob has delivered newspapers to homes on the same route in Pakenham for more than fifty years. Last year, he was featured in Century of Faces, a special report in the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette to commemorate the centenary of this wonderful local newspaper.
The newsagency channel has plenty of stories like Robbie’s. We ought to share more of them. They are also an important record of traditions and the connection of our newsagencies with local communities.
Click on the image for a larger version.
We sold out of The Age newspaper before 11am yeaterday and could not get extra stock. Every retailer around us sold out too. Based on customer requests, we could have sold double the quantity supplied. The folks at Fairfax underestimated the popularity of the Michael Buble Christmas CD. This is a surprise given the TV advertising they ran during the week. The CD was so popular that we had customers begging us to sell them the CD for the cost of the paper even though we had run out of newspapers. I would have loved to have been able to sell more newspapers.
There are some newsagency suppliers who regularly tell newsagents and those who represent newsagents how much they value newsagents and how important the newsagency channel is. They say that newsagents are important to their business. They sometimes throw out figures to support their argument.
My mum would say to us kids that actions speak louder than words. This is so true.
Suppliers who find themselves often telling newsagents how important we are and how much they value us could consider how they reflect their words in their actions. If we are the most important channel: show, don’t tell.