I’d be interesting in hearing from newsagents about their supply of the latest issue of Farms & Farm Machinery which came out today. Our supply was doubled (from four copies to eight) without any justification in our sales history. I can’t see any reason for the increase in supply.
I noticed in a Coles supermarket recently that they are selling Acer laptops. This is the Aldi effect. Aldi pioneered selling items like laptops, DVD players and the like in their supermarket aisles. Now, it seems, Coles wants in on the opportunity.
While newsagents tend to stay away from these items, I know of several who are having good success with these. In Western Australia a couple of weeks ago one enterprising newsagent told me of the great success he was having with DVD players, printers and a range of electrical items for the office. he has made some smart moves and is reaping good rewards.
It all comes down to finding out what is possible in your business. We find out what is possible by playing outsidethe traditional newsagency model. Who’d have thought thatwe could sell more ink than regular stationery in our businesses?
We are giving the long awaited Vanity Fair issue with Tiger Woods on the cover feature treatment with placement above our newspapers. It’s not a magazine many of our customers hunt for so it makes sense to get the cover in front of as many eyeballs as possible given the news coverage of Tiger over the last three months.
Click here to see a copy of our March 2010 in-store newsletter. We distribute this from a stand at the front of the shop as well as to customers when they shop with us. The newsletter features products which are promoted elsewhere in the business – either in catalogues or on the in-store radio. It covers various categories – key to balancing the business. We also have a version of the newsletter which we use for email marketing to our database.
We started producing an in-store newsletter many years ago. We have found it to be a useful part of our marketing plan.
Our team at Frankston is enjoying excellent success with their St Patrick’s Day display. It’s looking a bit thin now with hats, glasses and other items selling well. While St Patrick’s Day is a tiny season, seizing all of these opportunities makes us to go-to place for them. It’s a good point of difference which customers will remember.
Barnes & Noble, the biggest book retailer in the world, is continuing to evolve its digital strategy. Now that their Nook device is settling in, they have brought on a formet Time Inc executive to head up their digital team. A key task for the new role will be the release of a digital newsstand.
A newsagent in Sydney places all bagged magazines together where possible. In the motoring area, for example, they had a row of eight bagged titles. Some were away from other titles in their segment – motor cycles for example. Each title was given a single facing. I liked the look and the idea of connecting bagged magazines in this way.
We take care in managing space allocation for the top selling magazine titles in each category. We push back against a (deliberate or unintended) land grab by a publisher which may give them an unfair advantage. If a title is packaged with free products we work hard to ensure that its competitors are allocated the same number of facings in its regular location – even though it may get extra attention in a feature display.
With more magazines including free gifts, or so it seems, managing space allocation is a challenge. If left unchecked, some titles will get more space just to accommodate the larger packaging. While this helps their sales, it hurts competitor titles and this would not aid the health of the overall magazine department.
We need to be thinking of the whole category or department in our space allocation. We need to balance space so that all key titles have a fair shot.
I’d encourage newsagents to walk through their magazine department and look at space allocation. Are there titles being given more space than competitors because of the space required to accommodate the free gifts? If so, pull the space allocation back to give all key titles in a category a fair shot. You are paying the rent after all.
The health of the magazine department in our businesses is reliant, in part, on the balance of the mix of titles. Our space allocation decisions can alter impression shoppers have of our mix. Hence the need for us to make sure that we are allocating space based on what we want to achieve and not just to accommodate gifts which are packaged with a title.
We are promoting our Easter range of chocolates, soft plush and gifts in our window facing into the mall at Forest Hill. We also have the three prizes up for grabs in our easter colouring competition on display in the window. We have four additional Easter displays in the shop. Over the last five years we have grown Easter significantly. While cards and eggs are the top selling categories, we are seeing excellent growth in gifts and and books. It’s in our top five seasons of the year thanks to hard work from our store team and suppliers who support us.
Our book sale catalogue draws plenty of new traffic and our brilliant product displays drive the effiency of this traffic for us.
We are promoting Cosmopolitan magazine to shoppers as they leave our busiest magazine aisle. This location, on the back of an ACP magazines stand, has been a successful location for us. Toward the top of the display is an acrylic shelf off of which customers can purchase the title.
It is interesting reading about the debate at the Los Angeles Times about the placement of an ad covering the front page of the newspaper in the context of regular ad placement on and over the front page here in Australia by Fairfax newspapers. There is plenty of coverage by the LA Times move. See the New York Times, CNN, Reuters and The Huffington Post.
While the LA Times as is different in that is fakes a front page, the principle is the same when the newspaper masthead is incorporated in an ad or it and or editorial is covered by an ad.
How can we expect the public to trust and respect a news medium when the publishers do not?
Our St Patrick’s Day cards are selling very well, especially this past weekend. One customer purchased eight cards. They came in to buy a newspaper and left with $31.00 worth of cards. The other items (hats, glasses, stcikers) in our display are also selling well, demonstrating that a minor season can be valuable for the business. We have all St Patrick’s Day products in the one display unit.
Newsagencies can be the go-to places for all of these minor seasons. There is excellent money to be made. If only more in the channel embraced the opportunities.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony is planning to release an iPad like device later this year.
People’s Friend did not arrive on Friday (again!) so we pinched twenty copies from one of our other stores. This did not even fill putaway requests. Gotch tells us that we will have our stock on Monday. In the meantime we placed the Susan Boyle book where we usually put People’s Friend. She is Scottish and probably appeals to the People’s Friend audience. Selling one or two copies of the book will soften the frustration at not getting People’s Friend.
I mention this today as an example of how we try and mitigate supply misfortune with a popular title by placing another product which appeals to the same shoppers. Sometimes it works while other times it does not. Banking the results from sometimes is better than leaving the space empty and getting nothing.
Our work pitching the ACP Slow Cooker Cookbook is paying off with our Frankston store selling our in a few days and our Forest Hill store passing a 50% sell through in the same time. The best location has been the food column with the weeklies. I hope other newsagents seized this opportunity.
The considerable promotional work we have done for Better Homes and Gardens over the last four days (see here and here as well as the display in the photo – this is near the entrance to our shop) has paid off well. Comparing sales for the first four days of this issue with the first four days of recent issues, sales are up more than 125%. We are thrilled.
Some newsagents think that investing resources into magazines is a waste. I disagree. The success we are experiencing with BHG is proof of the financial payoff. This is a profitable title and even more so this issue for us. We have similar evidence with plenty of other titles.
Our Rolling Stone promotion is working very well. A 50% sell through in two days. It was interesting watching customers buying their newspaper today. Tow who came in to buy a newspaper left with this and a copy of Rolling Stone. One even mentioned that he had never bought it before.
I hope other newsagents have it placed next to their newspapers.
Why news media should not wait to develop iPad apps is an excellent piece at 10,000 Words which every newsagent should read. While aimed at publishers and journalists, it could equally apply to newsagents. It articulately explains the compelling interest in the iPad and the opportunity develop a more efficient channel, a channel which suits start ups.
Newsagents and some associated with the channel have derided devices like the Kindle, iPad and others released earlier and those who have written about the need for a newsagent strategy. These devices will have an impact and too many of us will have been found to be napping at the wheel.
We have created an additional display to promote Better Homes and Gardens this weekend at our main counter. With 60% of our copies of Better Homes and Gardens sold on the weekend this move makes sense. The free DVD on the cover and the promotion of this should make this issue really pop. We’ll take the counter display down Monday.
We have left our BHG displays up elsewehere because on weekends we have a higher percentage of customers shopping only the front third of the shop. This counter display is more for them.
Our sales of this issue of BHG are ahead of previous issues.
We are promoting Mothering Sunday with a small selection of cards. We have done this every year for many years now with good success. It is a reminder to our customers that we are the card specialists. It also serves us well in our particular area where many of our customers have mothers and grandmothers overseas. The cards left over work well for Mother’s Day. The range has been out for a couple of weeks and is selling.
More than 170 newsagents met in Adelaide just before Christmas to discuss the News Limited contracts. At the meeting the newsagents made their views clear to all of us there including the ANF. They created a committee to work through their log of claims.
There have been various discussions between the newsagents and the ANF culminating in the newsagents asking the ANF to form a sub-committee to progress negotiations with News.
The ANF has rejected the will of SA newsagents and ruled against forming a sub-committee of newsagents. It wants SA newsagents to rely on the ANF SA committee, the same committee which many SA newsagents have previously been critical of.
The ANF has missed an opportunity here to demonstrate a preparedness to listen to and act on the will of newsagents.
Someone asked if we had a card specifically for a nun celebrating fifty years of service. While we have an excellent range of cards we did not have this one. The request started us thinking about obscure card caption requests. I’d be interested in what other newsagents have encountered.
Newsagents sell more cards than any other retail channel so there are bound to be some interesting requests out there. I recal one a few years ago from a customer looking for a sympathy card for the ex wife of someone they were happy to see had passed away. Yep, obscure…
Our team at Frankston has created a stunning Easter display on the dance floor. Facing shoppers as the leave Coles opposite us, this display is attractive, functional and enticing. The key range is eggs and chocolates from Ernest Hillier. This is supported by an excellent range of Easter gifts as well as Easter cards. We have an excellent Easter book sale running with this important valuable season. We grew Easter sales by more than 10% last. The value of this was compounded by better margin on many lines. We have set a sales growth target this year and we have even better margins on some lines.
Easter is a month-long season covering several categories in a newsagency. This is what really appeals to me – we get to play to our strengths. Key to this is that newsagents will sell more Easter cards than any other retail channel.
The Last Diary Company has a good range of eco-friendly journals which our customers like. The photo shows three of the journals, there are other items in the broader range. They are part of our green stationery offer which also includes the O’Bon pencils, journals and folders about which I have written previously. Sales of the Collins Debden carbon neutral and Kyoto diaries can indicate the interest among your customers for expanding into the green stationery area. We certainly see the green niche expanding this year. If you are unsure, check out Officeworks and other competitors.
We are offering diaries at 25% off in one of our newsagencies to move stock and free space. Plenty of what is shown in the photo was purchased at a substantial discount off wholesale for this move so the margin is excellent. We have had an excellent diary season so far and indications are that this will continue for some time. The 25% off will kick that up – attracting traffic and building basket efficiency. Our current plan is to run this sale for a couple of weeks before moving back to full price.