Author: Mark Fletcher

This is the display we have created at the counter to promote some of the British magazines we carry. It looks better in person than my my poor photo shows. Headed The Best of British we have printed some flags to highlight the promotion.

In the day the display has been up we have sold some of the featured product – it is too early to tell if the sales are impulse or not.

While not a glitzy or sexy retail display, we think this promotion will work as it speaks to our demographic in a subtle way – and is located right at the counter.

We’re doing this because we want to promote the British connection across multiple magazine categories – not because a publisher is paying us promotional dollars. This is an important difference between small and big business when it comes to magazines, a difference some publishers are yet to grasp.

Time this week has a style and design magazine stuck on the back. It is frustrating that this is bigger than time – making the resulting double look a bit messy on the shelves. While the editorial and production folks for the Style and design issue probably have the size they want, the main Time product suffers – it’s too big for the usual location in our shelves and looks messy. The other side of this offer is how we display the product. Time is not a big seller for us so we’d just focus on the weekly and not the bonus title. None of these issues are big deals – just things we wish had been thought through.

Which copy of Real Living and Table am I supposed to promote in my newsagency this month? The regular issue or the one hidden in a sealed bag proclaiming 20% off. I know which one customers will reach for first – the bagged copy.

This is a frustrating offer from ACP Magazines. We have Real Living. We have Table. Now we have the real Living / Table combo pack – a new stock item requiring additional shelf space, labour and cash flow.

I appreciate ACP may want to experiment with these deals. I wish newsagents had been consulted first and that we were compensated for our investment. The magazine experience in newsagencies is built around browsing. Bagging a magazine like Real Living, which is already struggling compared to Notebook, will not help sales.

Real Living is a feature magazine this week so my question about which version to promote is serious – do I feature the bagged version promoting 20% off or the version people can browse?

This offer sends a mixed message to newsagents and consumers which, I suspect, will not help the title achieve what it needs to achieve.

It is interesting to see the Pink Magazine back in newsagencies as a ‘tip on’ with this month’s Australian Women’s Weekly. I am curious if the move has anything to do with the kerfuffle last year when the Natuional Breast Cancer Foundation decided to distribute only through Woolworths / Safeway.

Pink Magazine is not in all newsagencies – only those tied in with the ACP magazines Connections marketing program.

Newsagents have two sizes of Girlfriend magazine this month: regular and compact. I think they are the same – the regular size is sealed and I am not about to open the pack to check. But they do have the same number of pages so I suspect the content is the same. The compact version is cheaper.

Having two versions of Girlfriend means newsagents allocate more retail space, another title to manage, additional stock cost and additional returns processing. I suspect that these additional costs will not drive sufficient additional sales – but I’m open to seeing how this goes. We are promoting the compact edition next to the regular size.

Not that I want to see Girlfriend promoted outside newsagencies any more than it is, my sense is that the compact edition is more suited to non traditional retail situations where it would work as an impulse purchase – a cosmetic bar or clothing shop maybe. Having it next to the regular edition where regulars shop for the title seems odd to me – but I’m just the retailer.

High Performance Imports is another example of the magazine supply model letting newsagents down. With a sell through of between 30% and 30% we are not cut back – even though the performance of the title is well below reasonable benchmarks. I suspect supply is not cut because of distributor commitments to circulate all stock supplied to them. None of that respects or helps my business. Labour and real estate are abuse by this supply. While Network, the distributor responsible for this title, have improved this year, they have a way to go – in the meantime newsagents lose money on titles like this. What makes matters worse is that if I early return stock, I still sometimes have to jump through time wasting hoops to make sure I get the credit this month.

The sooner Network manage supply closer to sales of these titles – outside the top 200 – then the better for all newsagents.

Newsagents should check their supply or British Homes and Gardens. If they are link me, sales are flat yet supply increases. I am happy to support a title to find new sales but the extra supply with this title does not make sense. The category is well served, space is limited. Magazine distributors ought not increase supply unless sales data absolutely supports such a move. But if you;re a regular here you have heard that from me regularly.

I question the relevance of these British home and garden magazines in Australia. Based on my check today we have too many titles.

UPDATE (29/9): We have decided to create a Best of British display at the counter next week to see how grouping all the British magazines together goes.