I am inviting newsagents to provide data for my next sales benchmark study. Newsagents keen to participate should run their Monthly Sales Comparison report for July 1 2010 through September 30, 2010 on the left and July 1, 2009 through September 30, 3009 on the right. Tick the category box. Save the report as a PDF and email it to me. This will add to the magazine sell through rates work I am doing at the moment.
Just as we saw six years ago following the release of the iPod, more suppliers are releasing iPad competitors. Telstra yesterday announced more details about their T-Touch Tab.
Every new device which delivers easy access to contect which was previously primarily published only via print the new digital distribution channel grows in strength.
Click here to see my video with thoughts about this.
Look at the sale and return data for a title received by a colleague yesterday. The allocations system used by the distributor is increasing supply without reasonable justification – based on the numbers. While thay could argue that the sellouts in July justify an increase, I would argue that these sell outs do not justify the 100% increase in supply delivered by the magazine distributor.
I would like to see a rule requiring three consecutive sell outs before a supply increase kicks in and that any increase is no more than 20% for three issues before there is reassessment.
It would be easy to believe that in this instance, the distributor had stock to offload and used sales data to (weakly) justify an increase in supply.
Click on the image to see the detail of wonderful Halloween display created by a visual merchandising professional for newsXpress Maryborough in Victoria.
The display presents the newsagency in a very different light. It is also an excellent example of using theatre to attract shoppers. Well done to everyone behind this innovative newsagency window display!
We are promoting the latest issue of the Australian Women’s Weekly with this in-location display. This is what customers see as they enter our main magazine aisle. We have shuffled space to give us enough room to really draw attention to the title. I think Maggie Beer is the perfect cover subject for Weekly readers.
In addition to the in-location display, we have AWW in a stand facing into the mall as well as its usual location. We will pare back on the additional space after the first week.
I decided to focus on the title itself for the in-location display rather than the gift which is redeemed outside newsagencies.
Further to my post of Sept. 20 about the opportunity for newsagents near a Kenny’s Cardiology store, Allied Brands, the owner of Kenn’y corporate stores and the brand, accounced the appointment of Voluntary Administrators today.
If you own a newsagency near a Kenny’s store, do some research on the opportunity. While administration will see the businesses continue to operate for now, smart newsagents will act on the opportunity. Company stores are expected to close.
The headline above the masthead of The Age newspaper today reads THE BEST RACING. Trouble is, they must not believe that since they sold the space over the top of the headline to an ad stuck on for Work Safe. Advertising beats editorial again.
I am concerned that food is or is becoming overexposed in magazines and newspapers to the point of affecting sales. In addition to the excellent range of food magazines we have in Australia, just about every week there is a food related, usually a recipe book, with one or more non food magazine titles.
I suspect that customers are getting too much of a good thing. My concern piqued when looking at recent sales data for several food titles. Issues which I expected to pop had not.
There are only so many recipes which one can collect and try and with what feels like more now that ever it is not unexpected to feel saturated.
I served a customer recently who ripped off the mini cookbook wrapped around her weekly magazine and asked be to bin it.
By early 2011 we should know if we need a diet from food. If so, what next as the ride with food has been excellent.
Ink continues to the star category of stationery for us, generating excellent new traffic and driving wonderful year on year growth.
We are into double digit growth on last year – even in our temporary downsized store of 97 sq m compared to our original 330 sq m. As a comparison, stationery has shown only limited growth for the year.
Ink accounts for 50% of our year to date stationery sales.
With all the talk of newsagents needing help and struggling to find their place in today’s retail landscape, I thought it might be valuable to summarize how we have approached ink for the last four or five years.
Ink customers are valuable, not only because of the repeat business they generate but also because the boy other items regularly – magazines, stationery and even greeting cards.
Ink fits with an important aspect of newsagency shopping, habit. As a channel we are great at habit based shopping. This is why many newsagents are doing well with ink. It is a natural fit.
While the last five years have been good for us, I expect the future to be even better. There are excellent growth opportunities for ink ahead thanks to new marketing initiatives.
Is it just me or has retail traffic picked up dramatically over the last two weeks? This is certainly my experience across five stores in different demographic situations. Traffic and sales are up, especially in everyday cards.
While we have some good traffic generators: Halloween, calendars and boxed Christmas cards, the growth I am seeing is in everyday lines.
I’m not complaining, no way. I am am curious though whether anyone else is experiencing the same surge.
We are promoting the Women’s Weekly branded cookbook The 12 Days of Christmas in with our boxed Christmas cards at the moment.
We decided on this placement because the cookbook will appeal to those who plan early for Christmas. The same people are buying boxed Christmas cards at the moment.
We also have the cookbook located in with our regular cookbook display.
While the folks behind US wedding website The Knot in the are busy launching an iPad app, Independent Media, from the Australian The Knot website are launching a print magazine tomorrow. Yes, print.
It is a pity that newsagents have not been given an opportunity to determine supply quantities for this new magazine. Magazine distributors who hold us acountable for paying our bills on time need to give us appropriate levers with which to control our level of indebtedness.
My newsagency software company, Tower Systems, is hosting an Open Day at our new Head Office in Hawthorn this Thursday, October 28.
Running between 10am and 4pm we are planning for a fun and innovative behind the scenes look at our Point of Sale company.
People visiting will get a chance to meet our customer service, sales and marketing, development, administration and management teams.
We have two online training sessions booked for the day and visitors will be welcome to sit in on these from the other side of the camera.
We will also have a couple of rooms setup where we can answer technical questions for existing customers or show off our software to sales prospects.
Attendees will also be welcome to sit in on the Help Desk.
We are hosting the Open Day for a few reasons:
In planning for the event we decided to add some fun with a sausage sizzle, wine tasting and door prizes.
Anyone is welcome to attend any time between 10am and 4pm. No bookings necessary.
Come and see the Tower Advantage TM in action. Click here for a brochure with details.
English’s News in Dubbo is being refurbished and they have a double sided magazine gondola for sale for $1,500 – they cost $10,000 new. Size is 1.92m wide, 1.4m high, 8m long. breaks up into 6 piece units. The gondola has sliding draws the whole way around making it very handy for those battling lack of storage space. The unit was made in 2004 making it 6 year old. Call them on (02) 6882 7856.
We have placed the latest issue of MasterChef magazine between our main newspapers. We will leave it here for this week. Sales last month slowed so we wanted to give the title a push through this tactical high traffic placement. I have gone for newspaper placement because I think that there are people trying this title who would not usually purchase a food magazine. We also have MasterChef located in our food section as well as in a couple of pocjets with weekly magazines – for this week.
We placed the Doggy Bank at our counter to show off what we expect to be a popular Christmas gift. We placed it out of the box so that customers could see how it works – check out this YouTube video of it in action. This is the kind of item which needs to be demonstrated. While we have a coin to use in a demonstration, customers are proving to be happy to use their own coins and leave them in the box for charity. The money collecting dog is giving lots of pleasure.
It is good to see Woman’s Day promoting Halloween in its front page of the issue out today. There are Halloween recipes as well as trick or treat tips. Halloween is in our top 5 seasons and growing. In some newsagencies I know it easily sits in the top 4. We have Woman’s Day in its usual locations as well as with our feature Halloween display – next to our flyer of Halloween recipes.
Reflecting a new pragmatism among magazine publishers, TV Hits magazine is closing. Wednesday’s issue will be the last. With its falling circulation, it was only a matter of time.
An iPad edition of the Australian Women’s Weekly will be released this week according to a report in The Australian this morning. Editor-in-chief, Helen McCabe, is quoted:
“The iPad is one of the fastest-selling pieces of technology since the DVD player was introduced and it’s vitally important for ACP to be in the game and offer this to our readers and our advertisers.
The price for the iPad edition is $5.99, less than the $6.90 for the print edition.
Click on this image to see a larger version of one of the best graduation displays I have seen. This graduation display is at newsXpress Emerald in Queensland. I love the display because it congratulates local graduates and offers a broad range of graduation related products for sale. It’s the kind of display which will get locals talking and result in excellent word of mouth business for the newsagency. Well done to everyone involved!
This is how we should approach opportunities like graduation – especially since the majors do not do this well.
Newsagencies are the perfect seasonal retailer and graduation can be a lucrative season.
AdAge has published a report on sales numbers for magazines for the first six months of the iPad. The short version of the article is that the iPad is not killing newsstand sales but that it is also early days for the device.
In the middle of an article at Mashable about the AdAge report is this quote which will interest newsagents.
It’s also important to note that where digital magazines are really poised to take off is with subscriptions. Apple and major publishers continue to hash away at terms that will bring subscription pricing to the iPad. We agree with Ad Age and with publishers, once subscriptions become an option, the iPad magazine game will get a lot bigger.
As the use of iPads and similar devices grows, we will need to focus our attention of the difference we bring to the shopper experience in our stores and that which print product brings to the reader experience over digital.
I discuss the impact of the iPad among other things in a video: How Disruption of Print Media Will Affect Newsagents.
Following up on comments here by publishers that bagged magazines sell better, I have been talking to browsers in my newsagencies, when there is an appropriate opportunity, about what they prefer.
The shoppers I have spoken with fall into four general categories: irregular buyers of a title wanting to make sure this issue has value for them, browsers only, regular buyers of the title, friends shopping for a gift.
Irregular buyers are the ones most frustrated by bagged titles in my experience. Take the latest issue of Top Gear. Two shoppers I spoke with were about to dismiss this issue because it was in a sealed package. They like the magazine for its content and didn’t care about freebies which caused it to be packaged this way. I opened it for them – one bought and the other did not.
I also spoke to a couple of shoppers looking at the latest issue of Donna Hay magazine which is bagged with a gift. Both said they would not even consider buying this issue if they could not see what recipes were available.
Browsers are frustrated but move onto another title they can browse while passing time. They prefer in packaged magazines but note that they can always find something to read.
Regular buyers. I only spoke with a four. They said they’d prefer magazines un-bagged but didn’t really care. Three said the freebies usually didn’t add value in their view.
Friends didn’t care as they were buying because they had been told to or for a gift.
Newsagencies are, usually, browser friendly places. I certainly want to encourage browsing of magazines. Otherwise, we become like other retailers where the magazine category is not a destination but there for building a basket on top of destination purchases. Our channel was build on magazines as a point of difference and browsing is vital to that.
Bagged magazines impact on browsing. In talking with customers, my sense is that bagged magazines cause us to miss sales opportunities. While publishers say they have data which refutes this, I can only go off what my customers have told me in recent weeks.
I acknowledge that my sample is not representative since those who are happy with bagged magazines will have made their purchase and left before I notice them browsing.
I have been talking with a couple of smaller publishers this week about the damage which early returns can do to newsagency businesses and to publishers. Here are two concerning stories:
I understand why this happens. Newsagents early return for three broad reasons – at the time the stock comes in because their software indicates they have received significantly more stock than they will sell, during the month when they see a title is not moving and they need the space and/or in response to the need to manage magazine cash-flow.
It is the third type of early return, in a scramble to manage cash, where less rational decisions are made. Indeed, I have seen situations where early returns are selected almost randomly. While this will frustrate publishers, they need to understand the extraordinary pressure on newsagents to settle their magazine accounts on time.
The best approach to early returning is to select titles based on sales data. There is no commercial sense in returning stock you are likely to sell in a reasonable timeframe.
Media Week in the UK has published the full text of Rupert Murdoch’s speech this week at the Centre for Policy Studies where he delivered the inaugural Margaret Thatcher lecture. While it does not contain content of direct commercial interest to newsagents, I am sure many will find it interesting.
We moved our main Halloween display from a window to the centre of the store. This reflects the shift in approach as October 30 draws near. For the first few weeks our goal was to attract shoppers from the mall into the store to browse our Halloween range. Now, our goal is to drive impulse purchase business. While this new location can be seen from outside the store, it is not as strong as when in the window.
We needed the window space for our expanded range of calendars which are generating anything from $100 to $300 a day in sales.