Computerworld reports that Apple sold 300,000 units of its iPad device on the frist day of release – including presold units. This is more than for the first day of release of the iPhone. The mixed reviews since the release are not unexpected – again look at what followed the release of the iPhone. Content is what will make or break this device. Watch for a wave of publisher announcements over the next month.
We moved Better Homes and Gardens from the prime counter display to the air stand in front of the newspaper display. This move was necessary because of space demands. However, rather than not promote BHG in our impulse purchase zone, we have given it this position with newspapers – a hot spot in the zone. We know from past experience that BHG responds well for us if placed here.
The point I want to make with this blog post is that it’s important to think about where you move a title on once one display has come to an end. Doing a display for a week followed by nothing, especially for a popular title like BHG, is not necessarily good for business.
Calls for a ban on adult magazines from retail have been rejected by publishers. As a newsagent selling these titles, I’d note that our approach adult and retaled titles is quite different to supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol outlets. Newsagents are the professional magazine retailer in the retail mix. Adult titles are usually in a separate and monitored area of the shop whereas in petrol and convenience outlets adult titles are in a more public area for every shopper to see and browse.
It is rare that you see the titles mentioned is media reports, Playboy, Penthouse, People, The Picture, Zoo and Ralph, in a high traffic area in a newsagency for all to see. The experience in convenience stores and petrol outlets is completely different.
Newsagents and their employees watch the magazine department for inappropriate behaviour including theft, opening magazines with free gifts and reading adult material. Children in the adult magazine section of a newsagency are far more likely to be watched and moved-on than in other retail outlets selling the titles.
Those calling for nanny-state type restrictions ought to research the difference between magazine retailers before they call for yet more regulation which restricts our freedom.
We are promoting the Winter Favourites cookbook from ACP Magazines in prime position at the front counter this week. This title has performed very well for us in recent years but we know from experience that we have to do the work to drive sales. This is why we created our own marketing collateral (by copying the cover) and gave the title the best impulse purchase location in each of our newsagencies – at the counter between two busy registers.
As the photo shows, we are using one of our Just In! bookmark to show that this is a new title, just in. We use this bookmark sparingly to draw attention to titles shoppers may not first notice when browsing.
None of this extra effort is recognised in the cookie-cutter approach to magazine promotions and this is frustrating. I see newsagents and their employees regularly innovating outside the structure of publisher marketing programs without recognition. This comment is directed at all publishers.
While the best recognition is sales, I’d like to see greater focus on innovation around promoting titles. After all, you won’t see any innovation from supermarkets, petrol outlets or convenience stores.
Our bet on the book about Susan Boyle has paid off with 70% of stock sold in just over a month. The most successful location proved to be next to People’s Friend and in with our range of UK magazines. While that should not be a surprise, we did try the book first at the counter and while we sold a couple of copies from there, it is this location with the magazines which worked best for us. We put it out at $19.95 from day one, a decision designed to show us as competitive with others carrying the book. I was happy for a lower margin knowing that it would be the impulse item.
We are promoting the latest issue of Prevention magazine in its usual location with health titles as well as with newspapers this week. We kept the stand supplied with the launch of the magazine last year and use it from time to time to refresh interest in the title. We have found that placing with Prevention next or close to our main newspaper stand works best for us. We will leave the stand in the location in the photo for the next week before moving it to the side where it faces the card department.
We have placed Madison at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle. The free Model Co make up bag should work well for us in this location. We also have the magazine double-pocketed in its usual location.
This location at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle is working well for us. We pocket count and track what sells from here as well as the usual location for the title.
I can’t stress enough the importance of experimenting and measuring the results. If something works, keep doing it. That said, we do change location for this display unit with Madison from time to time – to keep us fresh as much as the offer for our customers.
We will leave Madison in this second location for a week.
The cover and accompanying marketing collateral for Cosmopolitan this month stand out, among the best creative I have seen for visually noisy newsagencies in a long time. The yellow is sassy and sells the magazine well. I’d expect a sales lift as a result of the look the team behind the magazine has created. We have placed the posters at the end of the main women’s magazine aisle – shoppers see this as they enter. We also have a half waterfall for the title itself.
I expect crosswords to be successful on the new Apple iPad – driving more to the new device. Crosswords is the first the first application available for iPad with crosswords, puzzles and pastimes. Click on the image to see a larger version. It looks easy to read. Playing is very easy – it uses the smart Apple interface to provide a good experience.
Australian newsagents are being held back by newspaper and magazine publishers not working together on a single IT pipeline with newsagents. The handling of the price change for Best Bets last week is a good example of how relying on a manual process can cost money and time for newsagents.
Newspaper publishers were going to operate with XchangeIT when it first launched years ago. Negotiations had gone on for some time and an agreement had been negotiated. Unfortunately, they pulled out the day before the official launch. I did not agree with their reasoning then. Today, years on, newsagents have missed out, newspaper publishers let us down by not enabling us to access greater efficiency. No, having to go to a website is not efficient for us.
I am undertaking another newsagent retail sales benchmark study comparing sales for January-March 2010 against January-March 2009.
Tower Newsagents can participate by sending a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box for a category breakdown. Set your first date range (on the left) to January 1, 2010 to March 31, 2010 and the date range of the right to one year earlier.
Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au. I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.
NOTE: If you are running our latest software, you can click on the BENCHMARK icon on your desktop, enter the January through March date range and have the software do the rest. If you have not used our direct email facilities – to email customer accounts or to email Gordon and Gotch supply changes, the software will ask for some email details from you. This takes a few seconds to setup.
Non Tower newsagents can participate by emailing me for a copy of a spreadsheet template I have prepared.
As with past benchmarks, I expect to get data from between 100 and 120 newsagencies in the next week. The results will provide an indication of sales performance year on year and give newsagents something with which to compare their businesses.
Check out the list published by Apply of websites ready for the iPad. You can add to this the media outlets with apps for the iPad.
While existing outlets are racing to the new platform, I expect to see new media businesses emerge given that the barrier to entry has just been reduced with the new device.
In response to posts and comments on this blog, the publisher of the soon to launch milk magazine is offering newsagents direct supply and a margin of 40%. They are planning a range of marketing activity to support the new title and will provide newsagents with A3 posters for in-store display.
I always cheer when I see a publisher directly engaging with newsagents in this way. I am especially thrilled that they are trying a direct supply model. I hope that newsagents support milk and find sales success from stocking it.
It appears that not all newsagents may have receiced notice from Fairfax of a price increase (to $5.25 from April 2) for Best Bets and sold the issue for a day before others alerted them to the change. If it were just one or two who said they missed the price rise I’d wonder. Given the number of newsagents I have heard from over the last 24 hours I suspect some failure in the notification processes of Fairfax.
Executive Editor of Time magazine Nancy Gibbs was interviewed by Katie Couric for her show @katiecouric recently. The discussion centred on the future of magazines. Gibbs expresses uncertainty about the future of print but no doubt about the future of publishing.
Here comes Everybody by Clay Shirky was published in 2008. Given that it’s primarily about social media, it is already somewhat out of date. That said, it is a good read about group activities made possible by social media. He talks about sharing, collaboration and collective action.
What struck me while reading the book is that for a channel so challenged by social media we continue to miss an opportunity to truly embrace it. Sure, some newsagents are using Twitter, facebook and other social media platforms, we as a channel are not using social media to create an online channel equivalent to presence and connection as we have in the bricks and mortar world.
It’s not too late as Shirky says: one of the things I most hope readers get out of it, is an excitement about how much experimentation is still possible, and how many new uses of our social tools are waiting to be invented.
I have been helping some newsagents embrace social media at the store level. What I’d really like to do is engage in a channel wide project which leverages social media platforms and our physical local presence to improve our relevance in a changed media world.
Social media and other online strategies present opportunities for newsagents to promote their businesses and connect with communities outside our four walls.
We see our newsagency businesses as community focused. Community usually means within a relatively short distance to our shops. The community Shirky speaks of is geographically further apart but still close in terms of connection to the business.
I see newsagencies, in part, as special interest retailers. Special interests can draw people from far away if the interest is dear to their heart and if you have what they want. We have found this with volcano calendars, train magazines and other product. In these cases, word of mouth is our social media. Social media sites can be used to supplement this word of mouth. This is an opportunity for us.
Is this the magazine stand of the future? Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to be selling iTunes cards in my newsagencies. They are working well as an impulse purchase, especially with a greeting card. They are working better than when we were selling CDs.
iTunes cards are as good as music since that is why people buy them. So, the comparison with CD sales is relevant. Whether they will be compared to magazine sales will depend on the consumer and publisher uptake of the iPad here in Australia. It will also depend on whether we have any break-out new publishers creating digital only product which appeals to the Australian masses.
Since we can’t sell the devices, selling the cards and top-up is the closest we can get.
My newsagency software company hosts around 80 face to face user meetings a year and it was during the current round, listening to newsagent interaction, that I wondered whether a similar type of forum could work for newsagents.
At the Tower Systems forums we meet face to face with our customers, share news, discuss ideas and gratefully receive feedback. It is a good forum – away from day to day business, more relaxed. I think it works for our customers as well as it works for us.
So, I was wondering if such a forum could work for newsagents – we do, after all, say customer service is a key point of difference for us. We say it but do we really ask our customers, do we give them an opportunity to engage with us on the topic. I have been thinking about my blog post about customer service last week.
It could be held at the shop or a local hall. The goal would be to ask customers for their feedback so that together you (and them) can build a better newsagency experience – customers are stakeholders after all.
I appreciate that the idea sounds odd, anything new does. Imagine the benefit if you got one great idea from the forum or if those attending left truly believing in your commitment to the local community. Both outcomes would be valuable for you and for those participating.
Sometimes we need to play outside the norm and our comfort zone to really innovate.
I was disappointed to see the subscription promotion on the cover of the latest issue of Run For Your Life magazine (out yesterday).
Their $9.95 promotion looked odd next to our $7.95 barcode label.
While I understand the role subscriptions play in the sales mix for a publisher, it is wrong that they use our generosity of space to try and convert our customers and browsers into subscribers. By all means have a subscription offer – but promote it inside the pages of the magazine.
I call what we do for them generous because we provide space to promote their title at no cost to them, we carry the risk of theft, we finance the title for a couple of months and we pay to return to them the unsold copies. This is a considerable investment on our part for their title.
I’d prefer to see the publisher engage positively with newsagents by including a putaway coupon inside the magazine and promoting at clubs and sports events that the title in available from newsagencies.
We are promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine and the free Fanpire magazine at the exit of our women’s (and teens) magazine aisle. While not the prettiest display, it is functional – placing both covers ay eyelevel to catch attention as shoppers leave the aisle. We also have the magazine folded out in double pockets in its usual location with teen titles.
Depending on space availability we may give the title a run with the major weeklies through Easter – the cover of the Fanpire magazine is what will sell this issue to irregular buyers of the title and to fans of the Twilight franchise.
Thanks to the extraordinary sales of Better Homes and Gardens last month – we sold out our initial allocation and all the extra copies we ordered – we have placed the latest issue at our prime counter position. We also have placed a couple of pockets in with our weeklies and a full waterfall in the usual location for the title.
Better Homes and Gardens responds well to aggressive co-location in the first week and for the weekends thereafter.
This issue is also being promoted on our in-store radio from yesterday morning.
NSW newsagents have been granted an increase by News Ltd’s Nationwide News of 4 cents a day for delivering newspapers over two or more days a week. A delivery only on one day a week to an address does not attract any increase. A seven day delivery achieves a 25% increase in the delivery fee.
The new fees take effect from April 12 and are being announced to newsagents today.
Magazine departments in newsagencies are reducing in size based on what I hear from shop designers and newsagents building new stores. Whereas in the past, an average newsagency would have 1,300 or more magazine facings, today, they are more often at 1,000 and even less.
This structural change has been underway for the last two or three years yet suppliers appear to be unaware.
The reduction in space commitment to magazines is the newsagent response to the magazine supply model and a reflection of sales. It centres around low margin (25% for most titles), lack of control over supply and flat or falling (for most) sales.
The best way for publishers to address this shrinking space in newsagencies is to engage on the issues of margin and supply control. I say this from recent personal experience. I decided on 800 facings. I would have allocated more space if the money and control was available. At 800 I have reasonable range without the high floor-space cost of the usual side magazine department. This is an important factor when you are paying $1,000 per square metre a year plus outgoings.
The publishers who suffer the most from the space reduction are the small independents. While some are responding with better margin and are considering a direct (more control for the newsagent) supply model, others are missing the opportunity of embracing change.
There was a time when publishers, distributors and newsagents would say that the magazine supply model in Australia was the best in the world. Chipping away at the edges, putting magazines into other channels and lack of structural support for newsagents has meant that claim may no longer be accurate.
I would like to see more publishers engage commercially: better terms, more control over supply and more marketing driving shoppers to newsagents as the magazine specialists. Of the three, a united campaign promoting newsagents could help address the first two.
I wonder how many of us are missing an opportunity with Passover. While the Jewish holiday may not have strong interest for many newsagents, we are all bound to have customers with Jewish friends. Besides the cards, books for children appear to be a popular and well accepted gift.
I’d be interested to know if there are any newsagents embracing Passover in their shops.
We are about to sell out of our second supply of the ACP Magazines Slow Cooker cookbook in a couple of my stores. We are also close to selling out of another slow cooker cookbook we have in stock. All we have done to promote the titles is to place them in high traffic areas. While somtimes we need to appreciate a win and move on, we will be ordering more stock as our feeling is that interest in slow cooker titles has some way to run yet.
I’d encourage newsagents to check out their sales of the slow cooker title. If you have sold out, consider ordering more. It’s good money, especially if it is an impulse purchase.