Author: Mark Fletcher

Following my theme last week of posting what we do at the front of our newsagency to promote magazines, here is the front comer of our counter yesterday. While not the ideal clean model, it works for us. Starting at the left is the busiest of our two lottery counters, next is the ACP Basket Builder stand – this is topped up daily, then we have the Herald Sun stand – the Herald Sun is also at our main newspaper stand, behind this are two titles which we rotate through the week, then is the Darrell Lea stand of impulse items and finally is a stack of VTAC Guides – this changes every week with another impulse opportunity in this place.

Once the redevelopment of the centre is complete and we know what our new lease line will be we plan to replace the front portion of our shop. This includes re-capping this part of the counter with a single professional unit which offers a more complete mix. For example, we will promote all weeklies and not just ACP product. The goal of the new unit will be to enable us to re-jig our message to people passing by our newsagency to reflect fresh product.

Sad to hear that Bark! magazine has closed. As I blogged two years ago it was an excellent title but lack of marketing resources meant it struggled to gain attention. Writing at OzPets, Melissa attributed the following quote to David Smith, MD of Bark! publisher:

Unfortunately, due to lack of advertising support, I have taken the decision to close bark!

Gourmet Traveller, Home Beautiful, In Style, New Woman, Madison … these are just some to the magazines this month with free gifts. The gifts range from bags to make up to restaurant guides. The challenge is to display the gifts in a way which drives sales – traditional magazine fixturing makes this difficult.

Over the weekend we promoted the Home Beautiful gift in a way which showed off the free Ultimate Shopping Guide gift and it worked well, achieving better than average sales.

On option we are considering, given the current crop of women’s titles with a gift, is to build a display around this.

I heard Friday that Nuts, the UK lads mag which outsells Zoo in the UK, is to launch here. My initial reaction was – do we really need another weekly lads mag – one which features reality TV contestants in naked and near naked shots?

Zoo is doing okay in Australia but I suspect it sells better outside newsagencies. But then, maybe another good title will being more focus on the category and help us drive traffic in that part of the shop and thereby help sales of other titles.

A report in The Independent in the UK Friday says lads mags suggests the bottom has fallen out of the lads mag market. Stroppybird has an interesting view on this here. Given the comments of some customers in newsagencies I’d say she is not alone – these magazines do nothing for equality. I would not buy them.

This is a new market for Australia compared to the UK. I was talking to a couple of newsagents yesterday at the GNS Market Fair in Sydney about this – they told me that Zoo is one of their best titles and growing. So, as you’d expect, in some demographics lads mags are strong and growing. The challenge for businesses like mine where interest is soft is to work harder at finding a market. One thing we need to do is to draw a distinction between FHM, Ralph and Zoo. The weekly is a different beast and needs to be promoted as such. And through all this, one has to navigate their feelings about the product itself. Ah, ethical dilemmas.

Photo from Nuts UK website.

Comic sales are falling in newsagencies. All but the high profile comic brand franchises are in trouble from what I can see. Our range (see photo) is a third of what it used to be. The range was cut over time because sales did not justify the stock investment. We are planning to feature comics at the counter to reinforce that we are in the space but, I am not confident about this. We are also considering moving the category in search of sales.

My sense is that the demographic most interested in comics is getting satisfaction from comic like material elsewhere: online, pay TV – both mediums have grown in coverage in Australia in the years over which comics have declined.

I have checked out a couple of specialty comic stores recently and they seem to be traveling okay so the hard core consumer seems to still be active – it is at the discretionary end where sales appear soft.

The launch of the new look Woman’s Day has gone well with sales up in the stores from which I have seen data. New Idea has had a good week too. The in-store promotional material for Woman’s Day, while good, did not tap into the new look enough to enable u to create compelling story around the change.

Also of interest this week is Woman’s Day and New Idea having a make up offer on the cover – it looked a bit me too. The offer was promoted on a small flyer attached to the cover – see the photo. The problem with these is that when placed back into the display unit after browsing – in any retail outlet – the flyer gets crunched and the next browser shows the apparently damaged magazine back and takes another which they crunch when they put it back in – you can see where I am going with this. Also, the offer, being on the lower left corner, is lost in traditional magazine racking.

This photo shows how we adjusted the display at the front of our newsagency today. We will leave it set this way until Monday when the cycle starts again. This week we broke with tradition decided on a broad offer rather than our usual single theme.

Of course, different demographics demand different approaches. In our centre we move to a more family focus over the weekend.

At Christchurch airport this morning:

While airport retail is a unique beast, I like how they broke a decent range up – made it look less like a sea of colour.

I have been on the road in Christchurch (NZ) today and found this shop.

All they sell is magazines.

Excuse the front window as they have only just relocated. I’d guess that they have around 1,000 titles. The shop occupies around 90 square metres. They focus outside the major weeklies. Niche categories get a good play as do adult titles – which surprised me.

Opposite this magazine specialist is a convenience store with all the major weeklies on display at their front door.

In the first ten on-sale days of the 2006/07 Australia’s Open Gardens on sale period we sold 1 copy. This year, over the same period, we have sold 10 copies. Last year we located the title in the gardening section. This year, we located it next to the Australian Women’s Weekly. I did this because even though sales of AWW are flat, it attracts many browsers. Also, my view is that both titles appeal to the same demographic. Sales suggest that is true for my newsagency.

While we are bend some rules with what we display next to AWW and our women’s weeklies such as New Idea and Woman’s Day, the resulting sales make the effort worthwhile.

We plan to leave Australia’s Open Gardens next to AWW for another week. Our goal is to sell out!