Author: Mark Fletcher

We use the cavity below the Tattersalls screen to feature product – more recently a carefully selected magazine.  This is important because it can add to the basket and increase the overall percentage margin from a sale.  While the placement may cause concern for Tattersalls, I can show them where we are promoting their product elsewhere in the business to balance out.  Food titles seem to work very well in this location – hence our pitch for Delicious this week.

We are promoting Diabetic Living at the counter over the weekend.  While we prefer to promote products with a valuable giveaway in this location, a lack of such product this morning sent us looking for something we felt would work as an impulse.  We selected Diabetic Living because it has responded well to other co-location promotions we have run.

The Financial Times reports that knitting and related magazines are performing well in the UK – with 2008 showing growth on 2007.  While the craft segment did well here last year, the latest sales data I have seen for january through marhc 2009 suggests it has been affected in most newsagencies by economic conditions, as have all magazines.  That said, I know from past promotions that craft titles respond well to marketing effort – better than many other categories.  I suspect this is because they are not top of mind for some and an in-store promotion reminds this group.

As we do two or three times a year, we are featuring a range of knitting and sewing magazines right at the front of our newsagency this week – in a location where anyone passing-by can see them.

With school holidays over, we figured that shoppers may have time to purchase magazines for themselves.

Special interest magazines such as those covering knitting, sewing and crafts are the only point of difference many newsagents have so it makes sense we promote these outside our businesses.

The fixture we are using is an old card stand.  It works well for this type of dispay and is easily moved in and out of the shop.  We count the quantity we place in each pocket so we can track the success of this space over the regular location for titles we place here.

Sitting on the floor, cross-legged and tucked into the magazine fixture, this browser worked her way through a range of women’s magazines for more than half an hour.  I don’t mind browsers (I do actually but I am usually able to remind myself that browsers can be customers if you give them time) – I have never put up signs saying this is not a library or told customers to move on for browsing for too long.  What I saw last week went too far, it made it difficult for others looking at magazines in the same area, especially some of our otlder customers in walking frames.

Years ago, we briefly contemplated putting in some easy chairs, like you see at Borders, for our browsers.  We realised that they would need to be in the aisles, near the magazines and we didn’t have the room for this.

I’d be interested in how other newsagents handle the power browser, someone who sits in front of the magazines like in the photo or, worse still, someone who sits on the flat stack.

We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health at our lottery counter – in addition to our usual location for the title.  Around 33% of customers presenting at this counter do not shop further in-store in visit – they may venture deeper in another visit.  The lottery counter location works for magazines for us.    Good Food is the most recent title we promoted in this location with an extra three of four sales we probably would not have otherwise achieved.  I think the space works because it is free of the visual noise of the more traditional magazine fixturing.

Our focus is about trying to drive a better return from lottery customers.  Just as we try and drive a lottery result from more traditional newsagency item customers.  There is balance being pursued in all of these small moves.  It is what we have to do in newsagencies.