Author: Mark Fletcher

I love the magazine stand in the photo. Sent out to support the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens, it enables us to promote this title in various locations around the newsagency.

Getting titles away from their usual place is good for business. This week we have it next to weekly newspapers, behind foreign language newspapers. Next week it will be somewhere else.  Each move finds new browsers.

Given our constant moving of stock, including magazines, a unit like this makes the task easier and helps us provide a fresh retail experience.

We have three F1 titles on the shelves now. One is the regular title and two special editions. This seems overkills to me. We have a certain amount of space allocated to racing titles and we have had to lose one title early to accommodate one of the special editions.

Maybe I am sensitive about this because I am far from a fan of formula 1 racing – I think it’s a waste of money and Victoria would be better off without the drain on our public purse. I don’t see any economic benefit other than corporate types getting suppliers to pay for a day of noise and booze.

On the magazines, maybe they will sell. I suspect that the F1 brand is over represented and that the special editions pull focus from the magazine itself.

I helped a customer find Women’s Day this morning. She could not see it. The photo below shows how the masthead for New Idea this week pops.

While people more skilled than me will have other analysis at their fingertips, given that most newsagents have fixturing like mine, I suspect ease of finding the title is part of it – especially for older customers.

Bauer Consumer Media, new owner of Emap UK has closed two magazine titles: NW and First.  Times Online has the details.  First is sold in Australia so it’s handy to know of its demise.

Digital photography is the category we are featuring in our counter display this week. We have changed our approach and gone for six titles with two pockets allocated to each. We felt it looked better than what we have been doing. Actually, we are thin on the ground in range so it made sense.

We are really getting into the groove of these displays, thinking a week or two ahead of the category we will push. Others in the business are chiming in with their ideas.

The better the planning the faster we can create a new display an that’s what we are after: small investment and high reward.

Every display we have done this year has been worthwhile in terms of sales. It’s almost like there is no such thing as a dud category if you display it right and have magazine titles which support each other.

What I like most about the display is that we are showing off our depth of range beyond the popular titles. This is our point of difference.

Even though it was a challenge to display on regular magazine fixturing, the free Gillette Fusion shaver on the front has driven an excellent sales result for the current issue of FHM magazine. It’s the perfect add-on gift.

We have had more success selling this issue of FHM at the counter than in its usual spot with men’s magazines.

At the risk of upsetting publishers we have taken the two two pockets of waterfalls from three busy magazine titles permanently to display six other titles.  We place the six titles based on colour and appropriateness for the women who mainly shop in this part of our newsagency.

Sales of Australian Women’s Weekly, New Idea and Women’s Day have not been affected.  Sales of Money, Your Mortgage, Better Homes, Women’s Health, Burkes Backyard and Good Health are up thanks to more eyeballs seeing them.   We refresh the mix of titles weekly and often make decisions based on title covers – we want covers which draw attention of those looking at the main display.

For years newsagents have been told to full waterfall high volume weekly and monthly titles.  By taking back the two two pockets we can lift other titles while not hurting the feature title.  This is a win win isn’t it?  certainly the basket data we’re looking at suggests our efforts are rewarded.

Newsagents are too regulated by some publishers and distributors and this stifles those of us who want to be entrepreneurial in chasing magazine sales.  I appreciate it’s easy to call for freedom and harder to implement.  I wish publishers would be more encouraging rather than chasing a common, lower, goal.

Further to my earlier post today about Good Health magazine, here is evidence of the value of promoting early in the sales cycle.

The new issue of Women’s Health came out yesterday, with posters and other material from the publisher. We created an aisle end display and sales kicked as a result.

I want my business to be known for promoting fresh product. The display for Women’s Health does that. People who see the new issue of a magazine first in my newsagency will be more likely to respect my store as the go to place for magazines.

Publishers need to understand the need for newsagency relevance and support us with in-store marketing material accordingly.

The early bird gets the worm, or so the saying goes. Good Health magazine came in a week ago and we duly displayed it in several locations and sold 60% of our allocation in the first five days.

Yesterday, we discovered that Good Health is the feature magazine for the ACP Connections marketing promotion this week. Too late I say. We’re now low on stock and while we could order more, they won’t come until Friday at the earliest by which time the promotion opportunity is lost since we would be a few days away from our next promotion.

Marketing promotions for specific titles need to be scheduled for the on sale day and not a week later. While the publisher will see this as me complaining, the alternative, and more appropriate, view would be that I want to maximise sales and that for most magazines this is early in the sales cycle.