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

Author: Mark Fletcher

Finding new employees for your newsagency

A question I am often asked by newsagents is how to find new prospective employees.  Here are some tips which I have found helpful over the years.  Some are obvious and others, I hope, are new to you:

  • Put a sign in the window.  Explain the position, the hours and what you are looking for.  Be sure to state how they are to apply.  Have a position description behind the counter ready to hand out.  This should also list availability requirements.
  • Put a notice up at any local community group which has a noticeboard.  This should promote your business (with subtlety) as much as the job.
  • If it’s an after school position, let local schools know.
  • Depending on the nature of the role, talk to your local community job centre.
  • Email your customers.  They may know someone.
  • Publish an email on the newsagents@yahoogroups site – other newsagents often know people.
  • Advertise in your own monthly newsletter.  Don’t have a monthly customer newsletter? Start one!
  • Let businesses nearby know, especially hairdressers – they know stuff and they talk a lot.
  • If you want a big pool of candidates, use SEEK.com.au.  While it costs a bit, the response is usually immediate.  It’s worked for us.

I could have added – let your employees know – but didn’t because it’s often better to employ people who don’t know each other.

The wider the net you cast for your search for a new employee the more you are likely to catch.

Crucial to success are: a good ad promoting the role, a good job description which makes it clear what you are looking for and agreement among all involved in making the hiring decision.

I am sure there are more ideas than those noted here.  Add any you can think of…

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Hiring employees

Examination of Bill Express continues

Mark Hawthorne continues his excellent reporting of the liquidators examination of the Bill Express mess in The Age today.  It is amazing how people who appeared to be at the centre of the company, signing documents, being the public face etc now say that they were being told what to do by others, one of whom is now dead.

None of the public examination helps newsagents deal with the equipment they have and the money they paid under the advice of the ANF long after legal advice had been provided that such payments should not have been made.  Those issues will never be resolved.

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Bill Express

It’s Lady Gaga season

lady-gaga-q-magazine.JPGLady Gaga is hot.  If you’re a newsagent and you have no idea who she is you need to catch up.  She is selling plenty of magazines and other products.  Check out the  latest issue of Q magazine.  It has a raunchy cover featuring Lady Gaga.  We are going to be promoting this alsong with our pre-order form for the Lady Gaga 2011 calendar.  We have found that connecting multiple items around a major personality works well.

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magazines

Promoting Dolly magazine

dolly-magazine-may2010.JPGWe are pitching the latest issue of Dolly magazine with one of our new style in-situation displays. This display went up a couple of days ago.    Regulars here will notice that we have placed the poster higher than we have been doing with this type of display.  This is because of space demands in this area.  We will leave the display  up for a week max.

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magazines

2010 World Cup magazines out now

world-cup-soccer-magazines-2010.JPGThis mroning we reallocated space in our sports area to provide more space for 2010 World Cup titles.  We have temporarily clawed back two columns of space from other titles to create the 2010 World Cup segment shown in the photo.  From Monday we will also have a World Cup display on the dance floor of our newsagency.  Plus we have World Cup collectors cards at the counter.

Sales have already been good for World Cup titles – they will certainly grow as we get closer to kick off.

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magazines

Repeating our Money magazine promotion

money-magazine-may2010.JPGWe are promoting Money magazine in its regular location in our business section using an A2 poster to cap a double half column display.  We did this last month with success so it made sense to allocate the space and give it another run this month.

I like this type of display for Money magazine since it lets people know where our business and related titles are and it gives the overall magazine display a different look to what you will often see in other newsagencies and magazine retailers – it’s certainly getting good feedback from merchandisers and others.

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magazines

Are there to be different MasterChef magazine editions?

My understanding is that there are three stock codes for the MasterChef magazine which launches next week.  One stockcode for the magazine for supermarkets, one for Coles and one for newsagents (and others).  This suggests that there will be three versions of the title.

Given that POS technology enables the publisher to see where sales are achieved, the only reason I can think of for three stock codes is that the magazines will differ between the channels.

Such an approach would not surprise me given that I would expect it to be very popular in supermarkets.  The MasterChef brand is closely aligned with Coles so it would equally not surprise me to find a Coles specific issue.

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magazines

Advertising the newsagency on community radio

We have made a decision to advertise our newsXpress Forest Hill store on community radio for the next three months. This is in addition to considerable letterbox flyer and other marketing activity we undertake. The community station we are supporting, Golden Days Radio, connects with our demographic and is strong in our region.

Our plan is to run a different commercial each month with an offer for their listeners. We are starting with a commercial about magazines and our unique value proposition. We decided on magazines because of the popularity of the medium among older customers.

We will be on air three times a day seven days a week for three months plus some other promotional activity with the station.

We continue to send out flyers to thousands of homes to promote our ink, books and other offers.  We also promote inside the centre as I have discussed here before.  While advertising on commercial radio would be interesting, we felt that a community radio campaign was worth the investment because of the demographic focus and the community connection.

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newsagency marketing

Mother’s Day sales tracking well

mothers-day-forest-hill.JPGWe are using our display window to promote Mother’s Day gifts and cards. Next to this, just past the window, shoppers in the centre can buy from an even bigger range of cards, gifts and Darrell Lea Mum’s Bags than in the window.

Mother’s Day is tracking well from what we can see – not only in our own stores but others too. We already have empty card pockets and while this is not ideal, it is better than full pockets.

From a gift perspective, we have been conservative in our buying this year, keeping to below $20 for most items and carrying stock which will work in the gift department beyond the season.  The centre has eight gift shops and majors and deep discount stores with gift offers so it is a department we take care with.

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newsagency marketing

Those damn Nigerian email scammers

Maybe it’s a seasonal thing.  I and several other newsagents with their contact details online have received “orders” by email in the last couple of weeks from scammers wanting to purchase products to be paid for by credit card.  What is interesting is that the items they have requested we do usually carry.  They have some some homework on our range.

My advice to any newsagent approached to ship goods overseas with payment via a credit card is don’t engage.  Odds on it is a scam.

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Ethics

How we interact with magazines

Sitting on a plane yesterday morning flying from Melbourne to Newcastle I enjoyed watching how people nearby interacted with magazines. It was like I was in the magazine fan zone of the plane, magazines were the entertainment medium of choice.

To my left was a lady devouring Madison. I say devouring because she was reading it from front to back, taking her time. At one point, I saw her brush a photo gently with her hand as if she wanted to feel the dress in the shoot.

Across the aisle and to the right, a lady was reading Prevention, making notes on what looked like a TO DO list, underlining points of interest and folding back page corners for future reference. It was like the magazine was guiding changes in her life.

Across the aisle and in the row in front, a guy was drooling over Street Machine – he didn’t turn the page that often, he’d look at a photo and then look away as if carried by a dream.

Next to my Prevention lady was an older couple sharing Take 5 and That’s Life, taking turns to make moves on puzzles.

I had been watching for some time before I realised that I don’t often notice magazines beyond the newsagent perspective.

The level of interaction and obvious enjoyment was heart warming.

Newsagents and those who work in newsagencies work hard putting out new issues of magazines, removing from the shelves old issues, keeping the displays tidy, and managing the department in many other ways. It’s hard work. I suspect that many of us don’t get time to interact with magazines as I noticed my fellow travellers did yesterday morning.

Magazines we sell in our shops help people change their lives, dream wonderful dreams, keep brain active and feel good.

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magazines

Bigpond blocks newspaper home delivery account emails

Spam rules within Telstra’s Bigpond organisation are getting in the way of some Victorian newsagents who want to email customer accounts.  This has meant that the newsagents have had to make other arrangements to get the business accounts to their customers by email.  Tower Systems has helped out by providing newsagents with free mail server facilities for sending out home delivery accounts.

This issue has come to the fore in recent days because of the fee changes announced by the Herald and Weekly Times.

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newspaper home delivery

Newsagents should check MasterChef magazine numbers

Newsagents expecting to sell plenty of stock of the new MasterChef magazine ought to contact Gordon and Gotch to determine their allocation and ensure they have the stock coming they expect to need. I have heard of several instances this week where initial allocation was considerably below what the newsagent expects to sell.

Think back to last year and the launch of Prevention.  The allocation numbers determined by Gotch were low in plenty of stores and sales were missed as a result.

By at least checking your numbers you have a chance to get close to what you need and help Gotch get the allocation right.  This must be what the publisher, advertisers and newsagents all want.

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magazine distribution

Strong early engagement with iPad newspaper apps

In a conference call yesterday discussing quarterly numbers, for News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch said that they have 64,000 users of the iPad application for the Wall Street Journal.  It’s important to understand the difference between a use of the iPad app and someone paying.  It’s early days to see the monetisation model for the iPad.  The prospects are good but it will be a year before really useful numbers which reflect churn and other criteria can be assessed.

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Media disruption

Excuse us while we play

You’ll notice an ad to the right.  We are playing with Google Adsense to see what happens.  With between 1,200 and 1,500 visitors a day, Google feels that there is a revenue opportunity.  We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks after which I will decide whether the ads stay.  In the meantime, we are likely to play with style changes to see what works best.

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About us

Australia Post to revamp stationery offer?

I have heard from several sources that government owned Australia Post outlets are set to revamp their stationery offer with supply to be controlled outside the organisation. One contact says they will offer stationery under a new sub brand in store while another says that the new supplier will fly under the radar – i.e. no sub brand.

Newsagents competing with a government owned outlet (there are 865 of them) should watch out for a more competitive stationery offer from Australia Post.

While stationery is still some distance from selling postal services, it is closer to their core offer than sewing machines and laptop computers.

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Australia Post

Chewing gum trashes Rolling Stone

rolling-stone-gun.JPGTwo copies of Rolling Stone magazine have been trashed in one of my newsagencies thanks to a customer wedging chewing gum between them. This is disgusting behaviour. It trashes the product and makes our business look bad to someone else browsing Rolling Stone.

This type of behaviour is not uncommon in newsagencies– it comes with the territory.

What can we do about it? Be more vigilant I guess. However, labour necessary for such vigilance is expensive, especially for a slim margin product like magazines. So, we tolerate it and whinge a bit.

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Newsagency challenges

Promoting Burke’s Backyard for impulse purchase

bukres-backyard-may2010.JPGWe are promoting Burke’s Backyard in front of our newspaper stand this week. We think that the free roses booklet will appeal to our customers – hence the placement in what has been a good impulse purchase location for us. We will leave the title here until the weekend and reassess based on sales.  While not the prettiest display, we have found this taactical placement to work better than a more attractive display.

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magazines

Free cookbook for Mother’s Day

aww-cakes-may2010.JPGWe are promoting the ACP cookbook Mother’s Day offer to shoppers as they leave our women’s magazine aisle this week as well as in with our cookbooks and one other high traffic location in-store. We are promoting the offer heavily as it’s an opportunity to sell down cookbook stock.  We want to do this so we can reconfigure the range.  Mother’s Day is an excellent opportunity to clear out older stock.

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magazines

April a rugged month for sales in newsagencies

Sales data I have seen from a selection of newsagencies for April 2010 and compared to 2009 shows we have just experienced a very tough month.  Even allowing for the Easter impact, sales in core departments – magazines greeting cards and newspapers – are down in most stores.  Several newsagencies have reported a double digit decline in sales.  The average overall decline in sales is 5%.

There is some good news – some departments have reported growth.  Books, Gifts and lottery products have all performed well in stores reporting an overall decline.

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Newsagency challenges

Smart marketing for MasterChef magazine

masterchef-magazine1.JPGKudos to News Magazines for the teaser postcard they sent to newsagents and other magazine retailers yesterday promoting the soon to launch MasterChef magazine. I can’t recall a publisher teasing the launch of a new title in this way. With magazine departments crowded and busy, the postcard is a good reminder of a major launch without intruding too much on our day to day business.

I am hopeful that the innovation of the postcard is an indicator of what we can expect when the title launches later this month – in terms of content and supporting collateral. This will be essential for the new food title to find its place in a crowded food segment.

Ideally, I would like to see publishers launching titles provide retailers with tools to help leverage retail sales:

  • Flyers to drive putaway requests.
  • Flyers to give to customers making other purcahses in-store – with room on the flyer for a business stamp.
  • A one pager of research to help understand the title – target customer etc.
  • Better margin (50%) for the first three issues to respect the additional time and space commitment involved in launching a title.
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magazines

Logies give TV Week a boost

tv-week-logies.jpgTV Week is selling well this week thanks to Sunday night’s Logies Award TV Show telecast and we are making the most of the opportunity.

In addition to placement of the magazine in its usual location, we have a pocket of stock on our main newspaper stand (above the Herald Sun) as well as the display in the photo on the power end of our busiest magazine aisle. We will keep this additional activity up until Friday morning when we will trim back to one display.

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magazines

Promoting Harpers Bazaar magazine

harpers-bazaar-may2010.JPGWe are promoting Harpers Bazaar in its usual location deep in our main women’s magazine aisle with an A2 poster placed above a double column of stock. We chose to do this to promote the free Collette Dinnigan T-Shirt which comes with the magazine – the pack looks better opened out rather than folded as you will see in most retailers.

Like similar displays we have done in recent weeks, our hope is to educate shoppers about this regular location for Harpers Bazaar – it can be seen from outside the magazine aisle.

While we continue to promote magazines outside the magazine aisles, it is these in-location displays which have got my attention at the moment since they reinforce repeat behaviour around a title –I hope for this at least.  We are being careful to not overdo these in-location displays.  We have set ourselves a limit of no more than three across the whole magazine department.

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magazines

Tax review, what tax review?

Is it just me or have we experienced an illusion over the last year. The Henry tax review was announced with much fanfare. For the last few months we have waited for the big reveal. Journalists were locked up most of yesterday to prepare the toe big tax story of the decade and then, well, all we needed was a pretty lady in sequins and we’d have had a great illusion.

Maybe I am missing something but I don’t see any major tax reform in the package. Sure there may be a reduction in company tax and the possibility of faster depreciation for some purchases. No taxes have been eliminated. No red tape appears to have been eliminated. It all seems like an opportunity lost to me.

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Ugh!
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