We are promoting Cosmopolitan in this new premium location at the end of our two busiest magazine aisles. This display looks good primarily because of the colour of the cover. The pink cuts-through the mass of colour in a newsagency. Even on the shelves, this issue of Cosmopolitan stands out.
I took the photo from our counter, looking across at the Dick Smith store which opened at Forest Hill in December 2008. From our counter we can see their excellent range of ink and toner. Next to Dick Smith and even closer to us is a government owned Australia Post shop – also with an excellent range of ink and toner.
When Dick Smith opened we felt some pain in ink and toner sales. This was short-lived. Our ink sales are as strong as ever. I am sure that ink sales in Dick Smith and Australia Post are good too. I put our success down to consistent engagement with the newsXpress HOT Ink! strategy – brand name ink at great prices and marketed regularly through brochures delivered to homes and businesses around us.
Rather than being swamped by the competition, the arrival of Dick Smith especially, we have lifted our game. We have broadened our range and extended our marketing to ensure that ink remains a growth category for us.
Ink customers, once they trust your knowledge, range and prices, come back again and again. We like that.
Looking across at the Dick Smith ink display from our counter is a great motivator.
Today’s Daily Telegraph has a story about the cost of buying a lottery ticket online from Oz Lotteries versus from a newsagent or other lottery retailer.
Every over-the-counter lottery customer contact we have is more important than every because of the Oz Lotteries online offer as well as online offers from Golden Casket and Tattersalls.
We are considerably busier than than any school holidays in recent memory, suggesting that more people, in our area at least, are staying home instead of holidaying in warmer places. We are noticing more grandparents shopping with grandchildren.
School holidays, the winter break especially, usually see business slow for a two or three weeks. The opposite is happening – even after the Oz Lotto jackpot went off. All departments are up and our holiday-focused sale tables, part of our STOCKTAKE SALE, are doing very well.
I’d be interested in whether other newsagents in areas usually affected by holidays (up or down) are noticing a different trend this year.
We have replaced the column of crossword magazines next to our women’s weeklies category with a column of wedding magazines. This is, I am told, the season for wedding magazines. We have done this previously at this time of the year and achieved a good uplift in wedding titles. Our goal is to get the add-on sale where someone has come in to buy a weekly title. We have 27 pockets dedicated to wedding titles in their usual location further down this aisle.
We will leave the column of weeding magazines for two weeks – longer if sales warrant the placement.
Sales of Michael Jackson related products have migrated from being about the story of his death to items which focus on his legacy. This is evidenced by exceptional sales in newsagencies for current issues of Rolling Stone, Time and Who. We could have sold four times our Time and Rolling Stone allocation. Hopefully, publishers will reprint as I suspect the appetite for Michael Jackson restrospectives is a way off being satisfied.
This display featuring the Michael Jackson special issue of Rolling Stone and the special issue of Who was created by Renee at newsXpress Watergardens. It looks stunning. It was a key reason for us selling out of Rolling Stone today – hence there are none on display until Monday when we get more stock. This display is different to what you’d see in most newsagencies and different to what a visual merchandiser would create. It is simple and leaves the poster to speak for itself. The red backing card makes both posters pop.
The display faces into the mall – it is drawing people to our shop. Magazine customers at Watergardens are efficient for us, often purchasing more than one title or buying from another category.
Watergardens is a newsXpress corporate store. It runs under management. It is rare to have such proactive local management as we have and for that we are grateful. The team follows the newsXpress principles and embraces the newsXpress opportunities.
The Independent has published an interactive map which is reflective of the debate around the future of newspapers. By interacting with the map you are able to navigate the diverse views and through this develop a better understanding of the challenges faced by today’s newspapers.
This excellent map is a fascinating tool, especially for people still working through their position on the future of newspapers.
Newsagents around Australia have the Tax Pack available now. To better handle the customer queries this week and next, our team has placed the Tax Pack in an easy to access location in a small display with financial year diaries. While we are giving over valuable retail real-estate to this loss leader, we know from past experience this this placement provides better customer service and is appreciated by our customers.
Folio reports that 275 US and Canadian magazines have closed so far this year. In the same period, 187 new magazines have launched. 525 US and Canadian magazines closed in all of 2008.
if you are planning a shop fit, do not include purpose built magazine fixtures. Go, instead, for flexible fixtures which can be easily reconfigured by any staff member.
Tower Systems, my newsagency software company is exhibiting at at the GHA Home and Giving Fair in Sydney and the Reed Gift Fair in Brisbane. The photo is of our stand GHA Home and Giving Fair at Homebush. Both of these fairs will be of interest to newssagents because of the cards, gifts and associated lines on display. Upwards of 10% of attendees are newsagents – which is great is it demonstrates that newsagents are playing outside their traditional categories. I find attending gift fairs to be terrific because you are constantly challenged as to what you could sell in a newsagency.
Then there are the bloggers.In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.Andrew Keen in his book The Cult of the Amateur cites Hurricane Katrina as an example when: “reports from people at the scene helped spread unfounded rumours, inflated body counts and erroneous reports of rapes and gang violence in the New Orleans Superdome – all later debunked by mainstream news media”.
Citizen journalists, he says, simply don’t have the resources to bring us reliable news. They lack not only expertise and training but access to decision makers and reliable sources.
The difference, he says, between professionals and amateurs is that bloggers don’t go to jail for their work – they simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters.
This is another extract from News Limited chairman John Hartigan’s speech to the National Press Club on Monday.
Hmm, I guess this is why journalists, myself included, are called for information on stories triggerd by blog posts.
In terms of intellectual value, I wonder if he has picked up the Daily Telegraph recently. I find myself recalling how News Limited newspapers handled the Pauline sex photos story from earlier this year.
We are promoting The Retiree magazine next to our main newspaper stand for the next few days. This is one of those magazines which needs to hunt down an audience. There are not too many people who would ask for it. So, next to the newspapers, The Retiree will be seen by more people and, hopefully, purchased. Our newsagency is certainly in the right location to reach retirees. The other reason for the high traffic placement is that Stephanie Alexander is on the cover – she will appeal to our foodie customers.
We are promoting the Rolling Stone, Who, Time and The Week special Michael Jackson magazine issues at the front of our newsagency today. Each magazine has a catching poster which should draw attention in this high-traffic location. Newsagencies are the best retailers in Australia for Michael Jackson coverage. We have the best range and offer titles across multiple categories.
I heard of a newsagent yesterday who sorted magazines by distributor before scanning returns because the software they used required this. They were adamant that they had no choice. I was shocked. Returns has to be simple – easy for anyone to do with little training. Smart software will let you scan in any order.
The Powerball jackpot of $20 million is timely for us. While it is nowhere near this week’s Oz Lotto jackpot, experience shows $20 million as a trigger point for bringing casual players to the Powerball game.
We are engaging some of the successful tactics from the last few weeks of Oz Lotto jackpots to drive good sales for Powerball.
We have been able to access some remainder Christmas stock and are planning a Christmas in July Sale using the collateral created by our team. Our plan is to run this for two weeks starting late next week. At 50% off we still have an excellent margin on most of the stock we have planned for this. In deciding on this campaign we are trying to tap into those hosting Christmas in July parties as well as offering an early purchase opportunity for those who plan ahead for the Christmas season.
John Hartigan, chairman and chief executive of News Limited, yesterday spoke at the National Press Club. Click here for an extract from his speech as published by The Australian this morning. Hartigan’s case, in my reading, is more about the future of publishers and journalists they employ than the print newspaper medium:
Instead of throwing a paper over your fence we will offer you a much more sophisticated package of print and electronic content, incentives for loyalty and tools that allow you to conduct transactions with our advertisers.
We will make our content suitable for the next generation of smart phones: devices that are still in their infancy with potential to deliver news, information, entertainment and shopping in high definition with full interactivity.
I agree with most of what Hartigan said in the speech. Publishers do need to evolve their model for new distribution channels.There is a bright future for quality journalism. Consumers will pay for this.
Newsagents ought to read the extract in The Australian as it reinforces my view that our shops need to be flexible and our businesses need to be structured to not rely on newspapers for traffic as we have done for decades.
The speech also reinforces my view that newsagents do not need contracts with newspaper publishers in this period of transition.
We have capped our busiest magazine aisle with a display for the new issue of Good Health. This has given us an opportunity to display the collateral for the free lip gloss which comes with this month’s issue. Often this collateral is missed as customers a quite close to the display. The aisle-end display is seen from the main entrance to our shop. The only downside of this position is its adjacency to Darrell Lea – from a health perspective probably not ideal.
The folks at News Magazines need to sort out their retail strategy. Using the same bag for two different titles, as they have done this month for Two Wheels and Live to Ride, will confuse consumers. Check out the photo. One challenge is finding the title – as this is blocked by the printing on the bag – both titles look the same. Another challenge is seeing (or not) the difference between the two titles.
I’d expect this common bag to hurt sales.
The Just In bookmarks are being put to good use today to draw attention to the special edition of Woman’s Day which arrived this morning featuring Michael Jackson stories. we use six to eight of the bookmarks for selected new titles which customers might otherwise not see as new.
The Mastering Digital Photography Guide distributed today by NDD is a perfect example of newsagents being abused by poor distribution practices. We are well serviced with Digital Photography titles. This publication, at $14.95, is expensive. It is also small and not suited to our magazine fixturing. It is easily stolen and therefore presents a higher risk to us. I can see no evidence in our sales data of various Digital titles to justify this title being sent to us. It looks to me like a cash grab. We are early returning all copies.
While NDD and their lawyers may say that this blog post is evidence of me targeting the company, I’d suggest they look carefully at their practices. They could have stopped this blog post being written by not supplying this title in the first place.
I am undertaking a sales benchmark study comparing April-June 2009 against April-June 2008. This study will provide an update on the sales health of our channel with the last study now three months old.
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 April 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009 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@tower… Newsagents not using Tower Systems software should click here for a spreadsheet template.
I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.