Vanity Fair launched its first iPhone app today – not so much about the magazine but engagement around the Oscars. It’s a smart way to engage with readers and potential readers in the iPhone world. Business Insider has the story.
Inside The Great Magazines is a program on ABC TV tonight. It looks like a must watch for newsagents:
A new frontier is opening up, a place where money and size are often the defining factor in a magazine’s influence. With corporate mergers accelerating, magazines often share corporate owners with other cross-over ventures.
Facing new challenges from the Internet and increasingly segmented niches, many wonder how the great magazines can survive.
This hour investigates the work of impassioned individual editors, writers and photographers creating magazines within these new market realities.
Follow Time magazine’s acclaimed Person of the Year issue and the evolution of a new women’s magazine in Afghanistan started on ‘a penny and a prayer’ in the final of this thought-provoking series.
This is the last episode of a three part series.
UPDATE (9:48pm) okay so this show is already out of date. It’s not relevant to today’s situation.
From a report in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:
Mr Murdoch said he was moving closer to imposing charges for access to all News Corp’s newspaper websites, and he revealed the company was in ”advanced discussions” with hand-held device manufacturers about a subscription model allowing people to access media content ”whenever and wherever they want it”.
”Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things digital,” he said. ”We’re on the cusp of a digital revolution from which our shareholders will profit handsomely.”
I received a letter a week ago offering Reflex delivered to my office free for $4.89 a ream. No newsagent can compete with that price since we don’t have the buying power of a federal government protected monopoly behind us. We also can’t compete on brand recognition. Australia Post has great brand recognition because of their protected mail services. As they say, they are part of every day. They are only part of every day because the government protects them.
Successive governments, Liberal and Labor, have permitted Australia Post to morph into a broad retail network with a key focus on stationery usually sold by retailers such as newsagents.
Every dollar they suck out of the economy for Reflex and similar excellent deals is a dollar less small business newsagents and other retailers can make for private enterprise.
I don’t blame Australia Post. Their bosses, successive governments, have allowed them to run loose.
This is a policy issue. Politicians need to decide how they feel about a government owned and protected retail network of 865 stores using their guarantees customer traffic (thanks to protection) competing with independent retailers like newsagents.
If I were a politician building an election year campaign on working families I would want to make sure that I actually supported working families, like newsagents.
Another title came out from the folks at Puzzle People yesterday. We received a chunk of stock for which we had no spare space on our shelves. To make room, we returned another of their titles a few weeks early. Newsagents don’t have the cash or the shelf space to be the warehouses for publishers and distributors. This is one of the reasons why titles are returned early. Publishers have control over timing and supply quantities – two key factors in early return consideration.
While we will miss one or two sales of Codebreak from Puzzle People, taking it (or another title) off early was the only option.
We are promoting Better Homes and Gardens with a power end display for the next week. The collateral mix from Pacific Magazines is excellent and will allow us to easily create another display elsewhere when we move the title on from this location. We also have BHG in with our weeklies as well as its usual location. Thanks to the TV show tie-in, we will promote the title heavily Friday through Sunday.
We received Beat the Bushfire Enemy with Knowledge book from NDD this morning. It’s $22.95 with a four month on sale. Ridiculous! It’s an odd size (A5), out of season, has a long on-sale and is priced outside reasonable for most newsagency circulation product. We have already given our free booklets on bushfire readiness. Newsagencies in bushfire areas have had stock of other titles for some time. I don’t see any upside for newsagents in being given this title by NDD. We are early returning our copies – it’s crazy that we pay for this.
Titles like this affect other publishers because they suck newsagent time, space and money.
The latest issue of Take 5 is a challenge (in a good way). It’s bagged with a free Mills and Boon book and does not fit in magazine shelves of flat-stack well. We have addressed this by giving the magazine prime counter space for the next few days to move stock. I’m sure it will sell well.
Surprisingly, we only received one poster to promote what is a good deal – we made do by copying the cover.
We have moved Men’s Health from the power end display to next to the newspaper stand – it has worked well in this location previously. We’ll leave it here next top newspapers for a week.
We are developing a small list of titles which work well in this tiny location – I expect the mix would vary considerably by newsagency. While major weeklies and monthlies would probably work here, we don’t try them since they get good coverage elsewhere in-store already.
I have been looking at the sales data coming in from newsagents for the sales benchmark study I am doing comparing January 2010 with 2009. If the sample I have seen (40 newsagencies) so far is anything to go by, January was a hellish month for many newsagents in the magazine department. I am seeing double digit decline. To (kind of) counterbalance this, a couple of newsagents are reporting double digit sales growth.
Looking at the stores reporting declines, they are all over the place including the critical weeklies.
I’ll have a better view early next week when I have a data from 120 newsagencies to consider.
Jon Dee writes at thepunch.com.au (the News Ltd online site) on how magazines and newsagents could embrace the new Apple iPad:
A well-designed magazine will have life in it for quite a few years to come. But one has to ask how long they can continue in their current form. Publishers would do well to bring newsagents on board this push towards electronic magazines as downloading magazines with substantial video content could negatively affect people’s download plans.
One way to proceed is for electronic magazines to be sold inside a traditional magazine cover in newsagents. Nobody expects to be given content free in a newsagent and it would safeguard the publishing industry from Apple having too much control over distribution. It would also sell the new generation of electronic magazines via outlets where people traditionally buy their magazines. To that end, it would minimise the culture shock arising from a shift to the electronic alternative.
It is interesting (and welcome) to see Jon include newsagents in the conversation about the future.
Check out the Paper Less Alliance.
The new look NW magazine has good visual cut-through on retail shelves. It stands out from the other weeklies. It has a bit of a UK weekly feel to the cover. I think the redesign will see NW picked up by more people and that has to lead to more sales. The renewed competition we are seeing at the moment in the weeklies space is good – they just need to remember that newsagents can be victims of their games.
Intralot this afternoon sent an important notice to its retail network about recent theft incidents of instant scratch ticket stock:
Intralot would like to make all retailers aware of a spate of robberies that have occurred in metropolitan Melbourne over the past days. In all these robberies,scratchies have been stolen.
We recommend that all outlets secure their scratchies so that they cannot be easily taken.
Once a scratchie book is activated, it is identical to cash and cannot be deactivated if stolen.
You should also note that if a customer comes into your outlet to claim a scratchie prize and upon scanning the ticket, the terminal will state “payment cannot proceed”, please call the CSC if the customer is prepared to wait or advise the customer to take that scratchie back to the outlet where it was purchased from.
If you have any questions or issues, please contact our CSC on 1300 760 867.
I am undertaking a newsagent retail sales benchmark study comparing sales for January 2010 against January 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 January 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.
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.
newsXpress yesterday launched Back to Work, offering a Toyota Yaris to one lucky newsXpress shopper and eight premium bikes as runner-up prizes. Supported by a six page flyer delivered to close to one million homes as well as compelling in-store marketing collateral, Back to Work is a brand based campaign being run with the generous support of key brands such as 3M (Scotch, Post-it), UHU, ACCO, Italplast, Brother, Stabilo, Dymo, HP, Epson, Duracell and Spirax.
While many newsXpress outlets ran Back to School campaigns Back to Work has received more support because few retailers play in this space.
New campaigns attracting new shoppers are crucial to the newsagency channel, campaigns in addition to the traditional newsagency campaigns. This is how we grow market share on a same store basis, by attracting new shoppers and driving better business from existing shoppers.
It is easier to get attention when you are playing in a less crowded space. That is key to this Back to Work campaign.
Yesterday, the first day of the campaign, we had our first customer come in with the Back to Work catalogue looking for a specific item. It’s great when this happens, especially so early in a campaign.
Disclosure: I am a Director of newsXpress.
It was a challenge yesterday reconfiguring the fashion space to fit Bazaar and the bagged Bazaar bumper fashion package onto our shelves. We made it by cutting space allocated to other titles back. We have found the best way to drive sales of premium packages like the bagged Bazaar issue is to open them out – this shows off the value of the package. This is what created the main space challenge for us. Hopefully, the sales will be the reward for the space allocation.
We are promoting the latest issue of Prevention magazine next to the Australian Women’s Weekly as well as it’s usual home in the women’s health and fitness area and next to our main newspaper stand. We have found that Prevention responds well to co-location and next to AWW is ideal. We will leave it in this location for a week.
Our approch with co-location is to try and use the strength of a title or other product to drive the impulse purchase of another product. It works well enough for us to keep investing time and space in this.
We are promoting Woman’s Day at the counter for the next two days. The free mini cookbook with the magazine earns this premium position. Magazines with free cookbooks on the cover have been appealing for us in the past. We can’t afford to allocate this space for more than two days – but that’s okay since we will achieve more than 75% of Woman’s Day sales in the first two days.
We chose this practical display option over a billboard display as it is likely to drive a better outcome for us – although publishers do tend to prefer the billboard displays.
We are promoting the latest issue of Good Food at the entrance to our main women’s magazine aisle this week. This display replaces Dolly (with the free towel) which did not go well for us at all – I think the towel is the problem there. Hopefully, Good Food will be repeat the success we have had with the title in the past. We are using both sides of the display unit in the photo to promote this issue.
Half of the front page of The Age newspaper is covered with a wrap-around ad today for ING. While advertisers may like this, newspaper readers don’t. Editorial staff must be frustrated at their treatment by the publisher. What’s more important, the story or the ad? The publisher says the ad. Fair enough I guess – they must put their shareholders first. As a newspaper fan I don’t like it.
I am not a fan of sale or return offers from newsagent stationery and gift suppliers yet we take them in my newsagencies from time to time.
Sale or return makes sense for circulation product, (most) greeting cards and (most current issue) books, it does not make sense in other categories when it is used to get us to take product which does not move quickly and or to take product for a lower margin.
I wonder if the sale or return offer lulls many newsagents into a false sense of security around the product offer – it’s sale or return, I don’t have to worry about whether it sells because I have protection.
With rents the way they are, we need to ensure that every square metre of retail space is performing well. We cannot afford to be lazy about product. If products don’t deliver the floor-space return necessary, they have to be cut. The floor-space return is based on sales and margin as a ratio to floor cost. This is where the sale or return offer can cloud our view. I have seen newsagents factor that a product is sale or return into the assessment of economic value to the business.
My sense is that we work harder when we take more risk with products. This is also true with (most but not all) products with better margins. Better margins are usually achieved from products we purchase on firm sale.
I think there are suppliers who know that a certain amount of product supplied on a sale or return basis will not be returned because the retailer will forget about this option or because the conditions around this are left to lapse.
The best stock outcome for us is good margin product which turns at an above average rate, product which generates a handsome return on the floorspace allocated and inventory capital invested.
Paid Content has published a useful chart comparing eReaders including the new Apple iPad.
Based on the coverage by mainstream media here in Australia, the iPad is already a tipping point device – even though it and most other devices are yet to launch here.
An Edinburgh newsagent has been fined £800 for selling tobacco to an underage shopper working during a test purchase by the local council. I can see this getting tougher.
We are looking for someone to join our newsXpress Forest Hill (VIC) store on a casual basis. If you know anyone please have them email me.
The Biggest Loser Couples pedometer giveaway with the herald Sun went well for us in most newsagencies I am connected with. At our Forest Hill store we received plenty of pedometers and didn’t run out until late in the day. We had plenty of happy customers and happy people dropping in to pick up their pedometer only.
We were not so happy at one other newsagency where we received 30 pedometers for 74 newspapers (we actually didn’t get any and had to go to the distribution newsagent to collect them) and ran out in no time at all. In this instance, the problem is with the distribution newsagent and the publisher.
Complaints aside, I like these promotions with newspapers. What is needed is a fix for the distribution issues we have covered here in recent weeks. I see this as much a publisher as a distribution newsagent issue.