Author: Mark Fletcher

We are tapping into the feeling of over-indulgence at Christmas with a simple display at the counter promoting a mix of diet and exercise products.  While not the best looking display, it has generated impulse business and that’s what it is there for.  We will give this display four to five days in this prime position – longer is the sales justify the space.

We created the display initially as an experiment to see if this mix would work here and because the space was free for a few days.

We fully embraced the Melbourne Boxing Day Sales season in all of our newsagencies.  Sales yesterday and today have been excellent, just under 10% ahead on last year (on a same store basis) but ahead nevertheless.

We are discounting all Christmas products by 50%.  A third of the Christmas stock on sale was purchased specifically for the sale.  We also purchased calendars, gifts and some stationery items at heavily discounted prices to give us good bulk for the Boxing Day Sale – these are at varying levels of discount.

We are using the Boxing Day Sale to show off the diversity of products we sell – this is essential given the new traffic generated by the sales.  We want these people thinking of us more for gifts and other non newsagency traditional lines we offer.  Our participation in the sales also helps combat the feeling among shoppers that newsagencies are expensive.

We follow the approach of the majors and start on the morning of December 26 with all Christmas decorations down and with product lined up to reflect deals – i.e. no pretty displays.  This is about value shopping where the price is more the hero than the product itself.

Core to our sale offer is our range of boxed Christmas cards.  We have been in this space for years and are known for having an excellent range before Christmas as well as after.  It is great to see power card shoppers back in over the last couple of days hunting for their bargains.  Our sales in the week after Christmas will come close to matching sales in the week before – with most at 50% margin or better.

We make more money out of our Boxing Day Sale than we used to make from Back To School.  This says something about our demographic.  It also says something about our ability to buy for the Boxing Day Sale and achieve an excellent good margin.

Our Boxing Day Sale will run for a week before we modify it into a summer sale for two weeks.

The new moon board game based on the movie from the Twilight series has been selling very well.  This is a new category for us and we wondered if it would work – especially with the major retailers going so hard on this product.  We have done well by having the game in a good location and supported by professional merchandising and external marketing.  We were tempted to discount to match the K-Mart price but have found that this is not necessary.  Not all of our customers shop at K-Mart.