Author: Mark Fletcher

I Highly recommend this video from US retail geek / specialist / advisor Jason Goldberg. Yes, he references the US and big businesses and big brands. What he says applies here in Australia because, online has no borders. It also applies to small business retail because, online has no borders.

The local Aussie newsagency focussed in newspapers, magazines, lollies, lottery products and cigarettes is fading, which is a good thing. petrol outlets, convenience stores, supermarkets and tobacco shops are taking over these low-margin convenience lines.

Aussie newsagents have been shedding tobacco products for years. They have been reducing space allocation for magazines and newspapers, too. The margin from print media is small and cover price decisions mean newsagents make less in real terms from each magazine sold today than ten years ago.

More newsagents, too, are not in the lottery space, having chosen to not engage with that highly regulated low-margin product category.

The local Aussie newsagency is evolving … and not in a network wide way, often not in a way that is easily identifiable.

While the local Aussie newsagency may still offer newspapers and magazines, it will most likely have an awesome range of products, which could include: gifts, homewares, books, self-care, nesting, toys, games, garden products, clothing, coffee, food and art … in addition to what you may expect in terms of cards, stationery and craft supplies.

There are plenty of local Aussie newsagency businesses that do not look and feel like a newsagency. Some shoppers don’t like this, they prefer the older style newsagency. The thing is, that old style business is not profitable in 2021. Newsagents can’t bank on the nostalgia pangs of some people. They need foot traffic, turnover and profit. This is why the local Aussie newsagency is changing.

Many newsagents have been chasing change for years and years, trying new products, experimenting to bold layout changes and shape-shifting their businesses to see what might work. What works in one location may not work in another location. This is why the unified and similar looking local Aussie newsagency of decades ago is lost today in 2021. The book and game focussed ‘newsagency’ in Inverloch, Victoria looks very different to the toy and game focussed ‘newsagency’ in Cooma, New South Wales, and both of these look very different to the gift focussed ‘newsagency’ in Sarina in Queensland.

While your local newsagency may still be there, expect it to be different because different is what helps them be there for the local haul, offering you access to magazines and newspapers along with a bunch of interesting and thoughtfully sourced products that work in your local community.

Indeed, in the newsagency retail channel in Australia right now you can see some of the most innovative retail in-store as well as online. It is an exciting time to be a newsagent.

If you haven’t been in your local newsagency for a while, check it out, be ready for a surprise.

Oh, and if you do pine for the nostalgia of the old-style newsagency, think about whether you’d preference one of those brick mobile phones fro the late 1980s or the smart phone you have today. Yes, the world changes. Retail changes, too. This is a good thing. So … check out your local, new, newsagency.

This Thursday @ 10:30am Melbourne time I am hosting a free Taking your retail business online workshop. Here is the link for accessing this interactive session:

https://zoom.us/j/93218516369?pwd=QW4wR0lFT1F1ZWtzQmFHK2ZxamY3dz09 Meeting ID: 932 1851 6369 Passcode: 636934 Booking is not required.

I’ll cover every question and topic people attending want including: where the shoppers are, what they are looking for, how to get online, how to attract traffic, handing shipping, back office efficiency, niche retailing and how to treat your online business as a start up.

Too often I see people think having a website created for your business is all you need to do to tap into online riches. In this session we will explore the real work, the on-going work that is critical to success online. We will break it down from a local small business retailer perspective.

This is not a sales workshop. It is designed to provide you with information that you can use regardless of who develops your website and regardless of where you are at in your online story.

Everyone is welcome to participate.

Discussions about empty office space and empty CBDs are growing, which is good. In the US, the conversation is more advanced than here in Australia, with Twitter, parts of Microsoft, Pinterest and plenty of other companies permanently adopting the work from home model or, at least, a far more decentralised model, it’s no wonder property developers are listening and engaging.

Here in Australia we are seeing insurance companies, banks and other usually centralised businesses adopting work from home more.

Scott Galloway has written about this recently. His piece, We (might) Work is well worth reading if the topic of the future location of office work interests you. It includes this…

The wholesale abandonment of office space has been among the most striking fallouts of the pandemic, and it will have profound effects on the way we live and work, long after the virus has been tamed. In New York, new office space is coming on the market 59 percent leased, down from 74 percent pre-Covid. San Francisco went from its lowest-ever office vacancy rate to its highest in the same year, and office rents are set to decline by 15 percent. The worst may be yet to come. Analysts predict that commercial vacancy rates will rise from 17.1 percent in 2020 to 19.4 percent in 2021, besting the previous high of 17.6 percent in 2010. And, as $430 billion in commercial and multifamily real estate debt matures in 2021, lenders will be forced to reconcile the effect of the pandemic on their investments.

Why does this matter to newsagents? How, where and when people work plays a role in the performance of high street retail and with the bulk of our channel on the high street, a decentralised workforce matters to us. It can play into what we stock and the services we offer.

There are plenty in our channel who see the work from home moves in 2020 as an aberration, they expect things to get back to normal. I am in the camp of what is normal anyway … every day, / week / months is a progression from the last, there will be no getting back to normal. Online, more people working regionally, less office centric CBDs … these are all connected issues, issues that the pandemic has sped up, issues that impact retail, issues from which we can benefit.

I keep reading up on this topic of office space use overseas as I think it helps to inform decisions we can make today, for our future.