My local Coles has some of the Halloween items we have in our newsagencies. Our prices for most items are lower meaning that, given their buying power, they have been too greedy on margin. Halloween is a small but growing season. We’re three years in and doing well. Thanks in part to Coles I maybe.
The administrators for the On Q Group, parent of Bill Express, issues an update late last week. There is not much news, the main announcement was that the Supreme Court granted an extension of the convening period by two months. This extension was sought to enable the Administrator to finalise their investigations into the company’s affairs and to finalised negotiations for a proposed deed of Company Arrangement. In their Advice to Creditors, the Administrator states:
We anticipate that a Deed of Company Arrangement may provide a more favourable outcome to creditors within a sorter timeframe and with greater certainty than in a liquidation scenario.
On Q is the company which committed to paying rebates to newsagents for the Bill Express / DialTime equipment and services. These rebates were the reason many newsagents signed with Bill Express. While I don’t see any beneficial outcome for newsagents from the On Q mess, it is interesting to watch the process.
Reports like the one you will find here in The Press and Journal appear almost daily somewhere in the
After reading this article, we each have to ask ourselves – what do we stand for? Put another way what is unique about our businesses? If we don’t know then we are lost. This was the topic of a presentation I gave at the ANF conference earlier this year. You can see the slides I used here:
I don’t have the answers. I have some ideas as do others. My key concern is that we are not talking about these concerns. Maybe in small groups, occasionally, but as a national channel of retail and distribution businesses, we are not talking about our future.
The answer to what do we stand for? has to come from us, not an association or a supplier. We have to find our own way to the future. That was the purpose of my ANF conference presentation and others I have given on this topic since. We have to engage in debate, research the challenges and work out what we ant from our businesses in the face of considerable change. This is a time of terrific opportunity!
Here is an interesting story just loaded to cnn.com on the advances made by Plastic Logic with their new e-paper device. While not new to regulars here, that CNN is running the story makes it interesting and even more mainstream.
Turn to page 36 of today’s Herald Sun and see another full page ad promoting newsagents. While this TV and print advertising campaign will not fix the challenges of the channel, it is a rally call for us to be proud newsagents – of our network and of the service we provide.
The folks at The Age have bravely stuck an ad for Tourism Tasmania over the top of a Sherrin football on the front page of today’s newspaper. On some copies it partly obscures a headline about Adam Gilchrist. It is a pity this otherwise good newspaper sells itself out.
Female Hairy Crabs Require 24 Hour Notice.
I saw this note on a menu item in a restaurant in
Mick and Tanya Baker of Rochester Newsagency are a great advertisement for Annette Sym and her Symply Too Good range of cookbooks. They are shadows of their former selves and they owe it to Annette’s books and hard slog on the walking track. Indeed they have a note of their success included in Annette’s new
Well done Mick and Tanya – talk about a living endorsement.
Annette’s cookbooks are sold exclusively in newsagencies and are available through Network Services.
I like the sleigh that Intralot is making available for holding lottery and instant tickets purchased as gifts for Christmas. It makes for a nice gift package. The Intralot marketing material has included advice on how the sleigh could be used to drive Christmas sales.
Intralot is offering delayed billing by invoicing for sleighs at the end of November. This is further evidence of them listening to newsagents.
Now all we need is permission to sell this product where it belongs – in the scratch ticket bays we all paid for and which Tattersalls is refusing permission for us to use.
I have received phone calls over the last few days from newsagents who received the DVD we sent of the TV commercial promoting the channel. It has been terrific hearing how the commercial is being played in-store and at staff meetings and even at home.
Part of our goal in creating this commercial was to encourage newsagents to feel more excited about their businesses and to be proud. The calls I have received suggest this is happening at least with some newsagents.
The current campaign run ends this Sunday. We are currently talking with the agency about another run in a few weeks. I’ll pass on dates here once I know them.
I am grateful to Queensland Newsagent magazine and Stationery News magazine for supporting this initiative.
It is now four years and two months since we launched the world’s first broadly based magazine loyalty card. I qualify our Magazine Club Card as broadly based to differentiate it from single title or single publisher cards. The card we started in our newsagency at Forest Hill in August 2004 is now part of the newsXpress magazine management strategy. A version of this is also offered through Newspower and ACP Connections program.
At Forest Hill, the card continues to work well for us. It has a cost of around 1.5% of sales and provides a practical means through which our customers can save on magazines. This card changes consumer habits – everyone likes to save money, especially on regular purchases.
The Australian Women’s Weekly continues to be the most popular free title selected by our customers.
This loyalty program requires discipline for it to work, discipline around the offer, how it is promoted and the support in the business from the top down.
Now more than ever, rewarding loyalty in retail is important.
We have road tested the Visa prepaid products we are selling to check out ease of use and operating costs. We bought a couple for use within our business. From a consumer perspective, the Canvas Visa Prepaid card with BOPO, it is cheaper to use for purchases and cheaper to load than the now defunct BOPO card. From a retailers perspective, the margins on selling and recharge are better than BOPO.
This is another example of newsagents needing to understand the margin of products sold and promoting those which offer better margin.
Click here for a copy of the new putaways marketing advice Tower Systems has published as a free service to all newsagents. Putaway customers are among the most valuable to newsagents – their baskets are deeper. Our last basket research showed that putaway customers are 35% more likely to purchase other items than any other customer group in a newsagency.
I am pleased to see Pacific Magazines getting behind Famous with another promotional push. It certainly has an audience in some demographics. In our own case, sales are soft in Forest Hill yet strong in Frankston. Frankston is where the display in the photo is located – Sherie has done a brilliant job creating a stunning display for the title this week.
Famous is different to other weeklies in newsagencies – it sells consistently through the week whereas most other women’s weeklies sell between 60% and 70% on the first on-sale day and taper to a trickle by day four.
Take5 earned the prized counter promotional position this week with the free Spring Sensations cookbook which comes with the magazine. It was a tough call with several magazines offering free books. Take5 won because it and That’s Life respond exceptionally well to counter promotion – especially Wednesday through Friday. We’d expect to replace the display by late friday because we should be just about out of stock by then.
The Harvey Norman Ofis store in Mentone is flogging excess stock notebook computers on Melbourne radio today. I am surprised that the store which is not even two weeks old has excess stock.
As individual newsagents and state associations contemplate starting afresh with a national body representing newsagents, click here to see a copy of the constitution which was developed for the United Newsagents of Australia body Tom Carter and I proposed in 2005. The idea behind UNA was to create a virtual association, a lean secretariat office which focused on association matters.
The New York Post reports that Time Inc derives 15% of its revenue from digital activities. I’d estimate that less than 5 newsagents out of 4,600 would come close to this achievement.
This is a smart move by McDonalds – free WiFi access in their stores. We did this in our newsagency three and a half years ago. I pitched it to Bill Express and the ANF at the same time. The opportunity was for newsagents to offer this network of free access and thereby drive more people to our locations.
I was interested to see Newsweek being discounted by 14% at a Relay store at Hong Kong airport. Given the demographic of the excellent foot traffic it makes sense. They also promoted the 14% discount at the counter. This was the only title in-store with a discount.
I would be prepared to trial a promotion like this for appropriate titles here in Australia – if the terms are right and if the publisher did not use the promotion to drive subscription business. Burke’s Backyard is a good example of a title which could benefit from support like this. The discount could achieve good impulse sales.
Dymocks in the Princes Building in Hong Kong has an impressive window display for the launch issue of Power magazine. Rather than posters and the usual materials we use, they have gone for a less is more approach and let the title speak for itself. This is more in line with the location (a business building) and the general approach to magazine marketing in Hong Kong.
As for the magazine itself, timing may not work out to be that ideal for it.
This is smart – gift cards displayed in front of magazines. While we usually display card products at the counter in newsagencies in Australia, it is the magazine display which gets more eyeball attention – think of how long some people spend browsing. I took this photo at a 7-eleven in Hong Kong. With space so limited here, retailers are smart at embracing every opportunity.
We can easily embrace this for use in Australia.
This photo shows a range of products made from recycled magazines. They use a technique similar to that used for making household items from bamboo. The items I saw look and feel good. The environmental message is strong, especially in the magazine space. These are items which would fit nicely in a newsagency, especially if made out of magazines we returned. There were two companies at the trade show in Hong Kong with items made from recycled magazines.
The Bookazine group have opened a new smaller footprint magazine and bookshop in Honk Kong. The shop would be no more than 50 square metres. Notice the magazine display on the front to the left of the shop – around the corner from this is the main magazine display which is quite small.
I have seen Bookazine evolve over the last few years. This latest incarnation is the best. The smaller footprint has a lot going for it in a shopping mall situation.
I like the this shop – neat, easy to shop, feels like a specialist and not too deep.
The remodeled Dymocks at the IFC centre in Hong Kong has a nice and efficient magazine display. Triangular in shape, it packs a lot of stock into a small space, covering most areas of special interest. The fixturing looks like it is from Kleerex in Ireland. The lighting behind the fixtures makes covers pop – better than shown in the photo.