Jennifer Coolidge is in Sydney for the Vivid Festival. I got to see and hear her last night which was a treat. She is also getting plenty of media coverage, in part because The White Lotus is such a hit. Anyway, right now is a good time to promote Harper’s Bazaar as people are more likely to purchase it on impulse.
SUper=markets and other competitors are unlikely to promote based on newsworthiness. It’s an opportunity for us.
I know of newsagents today using AI (artificial intelligence) tools in their businesses to save time and provide a competitive advantage. Here are some AI use examples I have seen:
Writing product descriptions and longer form product descriptions is a good use of the ChatGPT AI integration my newsagency software company delivered to newsagents early this year. You put in a few keywords and in seconds you have description text ready for your review or edit.
Managing customer chat for your shop’s website can provide a response to simple to modest queries without labour cost.
Writing an email to a supplier requesting a refund for product that is not performing. By providing ChatGPT some contextual prompts, the AI platform wrote an email making a sound case for refund consideration.
Writing a letter to the landlord seeking reduction in the rent. After providing ChatGPT some business details, the AI platform wrote a good two page letter with economic data that checked out.
Writing disposable social media content. If you have a product image and some keywords, AI could generate cohesive sentences for you in seconds.
Giving employees broader experiences and thereby making working in the newsagency more interesting. Let them show you what could be possible.
Finding new product category opportunities.
In some of these examples, the key to successful use is rooted in the prompts you feed to AI. It can take considerable experience to land results that are genuinely useful to you. Equally, you can botch this, get bad output and think AI is useless, which would be a mistake, of course.
There are other uses of AI already in systems and other tech in use in businesses, including in newsagency businesses, just under the surface. I could list some other uses of AI but I won’t for commercial reasons.
While it is appropriate to be cautious in using AI, generating content and other results for review is itself a time saver for any newsagency business.
I think every retail business should be using AI in at least some parts of their businesses today. It makes sense. Even as a starting point. Take the rent reduction email request. While anyone could write the email, that AI generated in seconds was well structured and provided a basis for quick review, tweaking and then sending – all in a minute or so, saying maybe half an hour.
I think what we will soon see is more cost-effective shop floor bots that can answer questions, price products and provide customer service beyond what we expect today. We’ll also hear them answer phones in shops too. Yes, all of the things will come in newsagency businesses.
Where more benefits will flow is in areas like buying where, too often, emotion gets in the way of good business decisions.
While there will be some in local small business retail who resist a greater reach of AI, soon enough it will be like the fax machine was a year or so after launch, an everyday part of business.
While, for sure, there is plenty to worry about with AI, especially in military and policing settings, there are so many other uses, like in newsagency businesses, where we can benefit and improve what we offer our customers.
It’s good to hear the federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, say cheques will be phased out in Australia. From the Guardian:
In a speech to be delivered to the Australian Banking Association in Sydney on Wednesday, Chalmers will say there has been a 90% decline in the use of cheques over the past 10 years alone but it remains a legacy payment method, while other economies have transitioned to digital payments.
In my shops, cheques not been sent or received for many years. In my software company, we’ve not sent a cheque for many years but we have several customers who steadfastly send cheques.
Cheques take more time to process.
I’ll be glad to see them go.
And, as for the whiners out doing the media rounds today saying the move would be ageist and discriminatory I’d say go find something real to whine about.
Find the July Issue of magazine at your local newsagents and supermarkets!
Subscribe to Healthy Food Guide for your chance to WIN 1 of 9 watches from Victorinox valued at up to $1,495 each! ➡️ https://t.co/i7kz5tt3GT pic.twitter.com/U4wGvrkJSp
— HFGAustralia (@HFGAustralia) June 5, 2023
This tweet by Harry Wallop is interesting to me in that it is happening here too – not in big or significant numbers, but it is happening. The challenge, of course, is the shingle and the expectations it carries.
Yesterday in central London I went into two newsagents – both with ‘News’ in their shop name – selling no newspapers nor magazines.
Profoundly depressing. pic.twitter.com/LEhGN4Qunm— Harry Wallop (@hwallop) April 14, 2023
Not that it’s my business but this shop in the photo appears focussed on convenience lines. To me, that would include newspapers at least.
The Herald Sun has a story, not behind their usual pay wall, complaining about the ad ban announced this morning by the Victorian Premier.
Concerns have been raised over an Andrews government halt on print advertising in the Herald Sun and The Age, with fears that Victorians will miss out on vital information such as campaigns to reduce the road toll, bushfire safety initiatives and public health alerts.
That opening paragraph made me laugh. I live in Victoria and doubt that many outside News Corp would have raised such concerns.
The Herald Sun is Victoria’s most influential media brand and the most-read newspaper in Australia from Monday to Saturday.
That influence was on show in the recent federal and state election results. Despite pages and pages of false and misleading stories and daily shouting at Victorians, Victorians did not listen, they were not influenced.
The Herald Sun is not important, not influential.
Technology today provides governments more timely and effective platforms through which to communicate vital information. The print newspaper medium is of rapidly diminishing value for anything, the News Corp versions of print newspapers even more so.
In my opinion, the decision makers at News Corp. have for too many years tried to interfere in our our democracy. One only has to look at their treatment of newsagents over the decades to see the extent of their selfishness.
I get it. Sometimes, the road ahead can have so many obstacles and the air is so heavy with fog that a pathway can be hard to find.
In the Aussie newsagency channel you can collect a ton of obstacles and feel surrounded by fog if you are drawn to the end is near talk and have your business rooted deep in the past for our channel.
If you feel like closing is your only option, I am writing this for you.
Stop. Collect data – your sales data, your financial situation information, local economic circumstances. Gather all the facts together, and go over them – not the emotion, the hearsay – stick to the evidence, the facts.
Usually, in the evidence, there is opportunity. The challenge is that often opportunities cannot be seen because of the noise of obstacles and fog. That’s why I say stop, get your evidence and sit with that.
My hope is that in your evidence there is sufficient opportunity to find a path forward for the business, and for you.
Turning a situation away from closing is my only option can only come about by one or a mix of:
It’s pretty simple when you read the list. The hard part is the action, that’s where retailers can get stuck. I mean, attracting new shoppers is difficult, especially in small business where the levers we can pull are limited.
The best way to attract new shoppers in any local retail business is to introduce a completely new product category, to represent it well in-store and to pitch it appropriately on social media.
Your existing suppliers won’t have helpful advice in this area because they are your existing suppliers. You have to look outside your current pool of advice and influencers and look outside what people know your shop for. Choose a category that is fun, appealing and for sure traffic-generating. Ideally, it will be something not easily found locally, something that interests you. That last bit is important because one way to drive traffic for a new category is to be a bit of a local expert.
I get that it may be challenging to find the energy and money to make things work with a new category. If the survival of your business matters you’ll find a way.
The best way to get existing shoppers spending more is through a smart loyalty mechanic and having a shop people enjoy.
The best way to make more from what you sell is by charging more or buying better, or both. Don’t go crazy. A modest increase in GP% could work wonders.
Key to the success of any turnaround is starting on the road early, before fog and debris block the past. It’s important to all of us who own businesses to be looking well ahead, over the horizon, cultivating assets we can deploy when we think change may be needed.
Before I leave the topic I want to touch on reducing costs. That’s a common approach to saving a business. While it could help, rarely in my experience have I seen reducing costs alone be enough to save a business. Sure, it can be in the mix, but it alone is not enough. And the truth is that a well run business has trimmed costs already.
If you think closing your newsagency is the only option, reach out. There are plenty of us in the newsagency channel who will listen, and offer advice if you’d like it.
You are not alone.
Mark Fletcher
mark@towersystems.com.au mark@newsxpress.com.au
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-fletcher-tower/
Maybe it’s just me but it feels like shoplifting is on the rise based on the number of posts on social media by retailers with photos of people in their shop who appear to have forgotten to pay for what they left with.
The Guardian has published a report on shoplifting in the UK. It’s worth a read as it’s written from a street-level journalism perspective, and while it is stories from Manchester, it could be from parts of Australia.
This small corner of Manchester is no anomaly. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) estimates that there were 8m “theft incidents” in British shops last year, costing £953m. The BRC says shop theft is a “long-term rising trend”, with incidents more than doubling since 2016-17. Meanwhile, reports abound of increasing desperation among customers stealing to feed their children – claims promoted by opposition politicians, but strongly contested by many retailers.
I think any retailer would find it interesting.
I have seen limited data and they indicate a rise in shoplifting in local indie retail in Australia. I have see more evidence of employee theft tho.
In a newsagency, the best early indicator of possible shoplifting is the magazine returns discrepancy report. Returns are processed weekly anyway so it’s a tiny step to check the discrepancy. If you notice these, consider spot stock-take elsewhere in the shop to test whether theft is a problem for you.
Benchmarks provide business performance data points against which similar businesses can compare their performance.
Here are the recommended benchmarks for newsagencies:
Now, these are goals. I share them here for consideration. You should set your own, based on your own situation. The key is to have goals and understand why they are what they are. That’s the reason I have published this information developed by my POS software company Tower Systems and my newsagency marketing group newsXpress – to offer something of a starting point for individual newsagents to consider.
I made this video Tuesday for one of my shops, to promote it on social media as well as YouTube. below I explain how I made the video and, more important, why I made the video.
I took the photos on my iPhone and used promo.com to assemble these, add text and lay music underneath. All up it took less than 10 minutes. I share these details to illustrate how easy it is for anyone to make a video like this.
This video is important as it is us pitching a narrative for this shop. For decades, the narrative of the local Aussie newsagency has been controlled by others. Today, in 2023, the narrative about our shops is rooted in decades ago. It is out of date. It challenges our relevance. It does not help us.
I wanted to have a crack at recasting the narrative for this one shop in a suburban Westfield centre in the bayside area of Melbourne. While for sure I am biased, I think it’s a good video that does re-cast the narrative for this newsagency, while at the same time making a statement about the channel, calling for others to see us differently and not as others so wrongly and ignorantly pitch us.
I’d love to see more newsagents do this, make videos and other social media content that pitches our businesses with a fresh and relevant to 2023 narrative. Points about lottery jackpots and the major seasons are predictable, expected. The more we play outside of what is expected the better for us, the more we are likely to attract new shoppers to our businesses.
As I noted above, this video took less than 10 minutes all up. There are plenty of platforms you can use to make videos just like this one. While I pay a commercial licence for promo.com, there are others out there that are free.
As for the products I chose to highlight, plenty are made in Australia. In fact, half the air time of the video features Australian made, small business sourced, products.
I want to call out the final frame. This features a pair of colourful stud earrings on a card that says you inspire me. That is a very deliberate choice to pitch that message at the close of the video.
Hopefully all this background is helpful enough that other newsagents create content to recast the narrative of not only their newsagency businesses but the channel more broadly.
But back to the video. In 24 hours it passed 20,000 full views thanks to a nudge through the YouTube ad platform. That’s 20,000 people in the area of Melbourne I targeted who watched the video in maybe the first newsagency pitch they had seen in years.
I appreciate it’s not call to action advertising. It’s not intended to be. As I wrote above, this is about the narrative relating to the Aussie newsagency. We all need to invest in this. It’s far more important than think tank meetings and the like by people who do not have their own capital tied up in this channel.
UPDATE: 26/05 @ 3:11pm. I’m pleased this video has not been played 32,000 times.
UPDATE: 06/06/2023 @ 7:18am. This video has now been viewed more than 102,000 times.
A short history of newsagents and how you bought your American comics from them. https://t.co/pubEBrroWA
— Glenn Miller (@FakeGlennMiller) May 23, 2023
The Vegemite brand is having a moment in the sun thanks to the anniversary this year. Licenced product is selling very well, including the mint coins.
The 100 Years of Happy Little Vegemites – Six-Coin Uncirculated Year Set 2023 and the 100 Years of Happy Little Vegemites – Six-Coin Proof Year Set 2023 are both selling well. Just today alone we have sold more than $600 worth in one shop. People travel for them, and they purchase other items at the same time.
I did not expect this iconic brand anniversary to go this well.
With the federal government set to announce today plans to regulate buy now pay later (BNPL) products under the Credit Act, it could be timely for local independent retailers to pitch LayBy.
The use of LayBy dropped away as BNPL like Afterpay, Zip and others offered shoppers easy access to finance for immediate purchases. While BNPL is used for many products outside the scope of LayBy, I expect the use of LayBy to increase once the BNPL regulations are in place.
While the ACCC defines the LayBy arrangement, LayBy is regulated at the state / territory level. In Victoria, for example, the regulations cover the contract, cancellation, price chan get and more. The level of regulation varies between the states / territories.
There is sure to be plenty of noise about the regulatory changes. I can hear some apologists for the BNPL businesses calling the moves those of a nanny state, lobbyists for the BNPL companies themselves saying that misbehaviour by a few has led to this and oh, self regulation would be better.
As a retailer, I like the BNPL products in that they helped drive terrific sales growth and they provided a level of shopper stickiness with regular BNPL users choosing shops based on their acceptance of the payment method. In one of my online businesses doing close to $500,000 a year, BNPL is the payment method for more than a third of all sales. At Christmas time that can jump to 50%.
In physical stores, the use of BNPL varies by retail channel, but it is a popular payment method, but often expensive to the retailer. Whereas credit card payments today typically cost retailers less than 1%, BNPL payment can cost as much as 6%. The benefit to the retailer is that there is no risk should the shopper default.
The anticipated BNPL regulatory changes give local retailers the opportunity to re-pitch LayBy. But first, we need to ensure our processes are fit for purpose, smooth, understandable, appealing to shoppers and economically viable for us. This is where retail management software comes into play. POS software can offer easy structuring of terms and conditions, managing the appropriate deposit, set different expiry terms for a LayBy based on the products in the LayBy, track payments, following up missed payments and tracking where LayBy products are stored. Plus, you can edit a layBy once commenced – by adding and removing stock, and you can manage partial collection of items in the LayBy.
Introducing a LayBy service fee could be a good way to qualify the LayBy shopper and cover some of the costs involved. There are retailers in Australia charing from $3.00 (Target) to $15.00 (Big W) in LayBy fees. Depending on how you structure it, this could be in addition to a cancellation fee.
My advice to retailers is to focus more on the expectation that all LayBys will be fully paid and collected on time, to consider LayBy as a positive service by the business and opportunity for the customer. Promote it. Welcome its use. Make managing it easy for you and the shopper.
Local retailers can make decisions around offering LayBy that could differentiate their businesses from bigger retailers.
News outlets will carry stories of the BNPL regulatory changes as they make their way to reality. This is why now would be a good time to pitch LayBy in-store and on social media.
While I get that many newsagents are reducing space commitment to magazines on the back of declining sales, at my Malvern store sales are growing. I think this is in part due to our out of store promotions like the video below that we released yesterday.
In one of my other newsagencies we have no magazines while in may third we have 250 pockets, which is under review.
This video shows part of the Malvern range.
This video is part of a weekly promotion outside the shop of magazines, designed to attract new shoppers – and it’s working for us.
It took me all of ten minutes to shoot the video on my phone, strip out shop sounds using iMovie, load it to promo.com, enter the text and lay a music track over iot. Now I have a video that I will use in several places several times over the next couple of weeks.
No other retailer anywhere near our malvern shop is promoting magazine range.
Our crossword sales in the newsagency are up by 29% to $3,343.00, or 308 in unit sales.
There are 2 things we have done that, I think, have helped drive this:
Yes, I am disappointed that we continue to only make 25% GP and that cover price movement has been minimal, not keeping up with inflation. That said, the growth from a small effort is terrific.
I can’t be sure as to why we are seeing this growth in crossword sales. If it is wider than our newsagency then I suspect it is related to the economy or how people feel about the economy at least. If it’s just us then what we have done has to be key here. I do think our small but targeted actions have played a key role.
Overall magazine sales are up 6% year on year, making the 29% growth for crossword titles worth consideration.
While I’ve only seen sales reports from a small number of newsagencies so far, an interesting stand-out in the Mother’s Day card sales is the growth in Mother’s Day Lifestyle cards. It is significant, noticeable. Now, that may have to do with supplier segmentation. It’s too early to tell.
More broadly on the season, the results appear to be okay, not brilliant, bot okay … up on last year.
Outside of Mother’s Day, I am seeing continued good growth in everyday captions, 10% and more. 2023 is developing as a good year for card sales.
Now, this is relevant because of the barriers newspaper publishers place in front of those who wish to cancel their subscription. Both News Corp. and Nine Media deploy time wasting barriers to those wishing to cancel a subscription, I’ve experienced it myself. As the video shows, an AI bot has more energy for the process.
Here is a DoNotPay GPT-4 bot negotiating with the New York Times to cancel my subscription.
It is ridiculous you have to chat with a customer service agent to cancel.
Fortunately, A.I. will end dark patterns, because it doesn’t give up as easily as a human! pic.twitter.com/lUNqtJQ9Pb
— Joshua Browder (@jbrowder1) May 12, 2023
For decades, major card companies in Australia won new business by offering a rebate on purchases, and we all loved it.
Newsagents would change card companies because of a bigger rebate offer. Oh, that and ‘interest free’ loans we could draw based on anticipated rebates.
What many of us soon realised is that the rebate is worthless unless you sell the cards as it is only when you sell something that you bought at a discount off wholesale, which is, after all, what a rebate from a card company is, that you bank the rebate value.
Switching to a new card company because of rebate could be a mistake unless their cards sell as well as or better than what you have today.
The main reason to switch card companies in my view is to sell more cards.
It’s only when you sell cards that you make money.
Already in 2023 we have seen enough trading to consider 12% year on year growth in card sales as a reasonable benchmark against which to compare your newsagency business.
If a card company’s main pitch is the quantum of the rebate, my advice is question why they pitch this ahead of the actual products.
What you want, and need, is cards that drive new traffic and more purchases in each visit, you want product that perform above average. This is about card company choice and about how your in-store range is managed – two quite different things.
Cards are the best margin products in our businesses. They deserve our active management attention.
My advice is check your year to date performance against 2022. Are you up 12%? If not, think about what you might do about that, and consider it in the context of any rebate pitch put to you.
This has been on my mind because of conversations with some newsagents recently where rebate was the topic.
One stuck out – they said they would not switch unless a card company matched their current rebate. Their card sales are down 9% year on year. That decline is twice the overall business decline, meaning there is a problem with card range. They refused to look at any other supplier, thereby =not considering that range might be the issue.
I see any rebate as a pot I can draw from to help drive card sales, and I do that to fund a loyalty program, and more. each month I am seeing terrific results, like for April.
Yes, that’s 19% growth in 2023 over 2022. If I compare back to 2019, cards in this business are more than 50% up.
I know that if I get the card story right in-store and in socials pitches not only does that department benefit but the whole shop benefits because of card shopper dwell time. And, all that flows to margin dollars banked, which are far more value than the promise of a rebate in the hope of selling something.
This post is not about any specific card company. I am not suggesting you switch to any specific card company. My advice is that you make your business decisions on what you bank, and that spends solely on sales.
Join me via Zoom Tuesday May 16 @ 11am Melbourne time for a Newsagency of the Future workshop.
I will share up to date retail newsagency performance data, sales data from outside our channel for categories allied to what we do, thoughts on the rest of 2023 and into 2024. I will also cover some trends into the future that present opportunities.
There will be an open Q&A.
While Covid continues to circulate, it is over from a disruptive perspective. I think there are things we can leverage from the pandemic experience. I also think there are category opportunities for growing business GP% and attracting new shoppers.
I am not running the session to sell you anything, or to get you to sign ups to anything. My sole motivation is for the retail newsagency channel to be strong, vibrant.
It is a competitive world out there and I think all of us in retail newsagency businesses can do better.
Here is the link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84982771189?pwd=RWdRM0s3bENpZ2F5UGxNblkzKzN3QT09
Meeting ID: 849 8277 1189 Passcode: 103292
I’ll record the session.
Anyone is welcome.
I was talking with a newsagent the other day and was surprised to discover that they discover the profitability of their business twice a year, when their accountant meets with them, and even then, the information relates to a trading period from two or three months prior.
They have no processes in place to track and report profitability more frequently. They are not looking at GP% mix, say, weekly, looking for trends.
Their reasoning is that the accountant is the expert and that as the retailer they do not have the skills to understand the business performance at that level.
Not knowing business profitability at more frequent intervals and close to the actual performance is a problem for any business.
Gross profit is the pot from which you pay rent, employees, loans and yourself. Not managing that in a timely manner can see a business slip away.
Too often I see local independent retailers get caught in a narrative no one has any money or the economy is really tough or we’re busier than ever or no that doesn’t sell. More than half the time the statements are checked with business data, which is rare in itself, the statements are not supported by the business data.
My point here is that what matters more than anything else about newsagency performance and any local independent retail business performance is what business data report, your P&L, profitability reports from your POS software, your evidence. Your business data will guide better business decisions. Waiting a month or two for an accountant to provide their take on what they see is too long.
If you own a newsagency you need to be serious about your business data as it sets you up for trading profitably and selling more easily when that time comes.
So, are you making money in your newsagency?
Seek out that information and establish processes for you to have easy access to the information regularly. If you are not making money, your only option is to make changes in the business. There is never a real barrier to making such changes.
Fixing profitability starts with knowing where you are at.
In his 1960 book, Reality in Advertising, Rosser Reeves, a respected US advertising executive, introduced the world to the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition, USP for short.
Reeves defined USP in an advertising context:
In the 1960s and 1970s, the concept of a unique selling proposition evolved from being essential to advertising to being essential in business. Finding your business USP was considered mission critical to businesses, retailers especially. Businesses drifted however and forgot about the importance of a USP.
Today, it is common to see ads with we will not be beaten on price or if you find it cheaper elsewhere we will sell for 5% (or more) less. These pitches are from lazy marketers who think price is the most important USP and while it is a factor to some shoppers, value is often about much more than price.
Jack Trout told us a few years ago that USP was relevant today. In 2000, he said that a Unique Selling Proposition was mission critical in business in his aptly titled book Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition.
Differentiate of Die. There is no doubt about the call to action in the title, no doubt about the consequences of inaction.
Yet many retailers, for the most part, have remained still in the face of an onslaught of competition. Some newsagents have remained still.
Retail is complex, challenging and changing rapidly today. The differences between competitors fewer. Retailers are surrounded by competition and it grows by the day. Yet many have remained still and done nothing.
Our channel continues to be confronted by the migration to digital, more local retail competitors and online shops selling what we sell. Those who have stood still feel the impact more than others.
Smart retailers are re-acquainting themselves with the writings of Reeves and Trout and leaning about the mission critical imperative of having a Unique Selling Proposition.
Differentiation could be service, products or location or a combination of these. Differentiation will most likely not be price as anyone can match this easily. Price is, after all, the last line of defense in any business battle. That said, there are some major price-focused success stories – WalMart for example. It is rare in an independent retail situation.
To develop your USP, engage with your employees and other stakeholders. or, do it yourself with your own deep dive into what you want your business to stand for. This is leadership. Take your time. Determine what you and your business stand for. Following open and honest discussion and debate, the USP around which everyone in the business can willingly congregate will emerge.
A good USP will not require an advertising campaign to communicate. It will become obvious through actions and decisions. By living the USP in every facet of the business you soon become seen as unique by shoppers and this can drive excellent word of mouth and success for the business.
While differentiation in retail is more important today than ever thanks to today’s economic conditions, the approach to the challenge is the same as in the 1960s.
If you are not sure where to start when considering your USP, look at your POS software and the data it curates about your business for in that data will be insights into your points of differences things you can cultivate to have a stronger USP.
Your POS software is a good place to start as your shoppers show you through their behaviour what they like and don’t like about your business.
No one can tell you what your USP should be. It has to come from you, from inside your business. It has to reflect what you believe, how you want your business to be seen and known.
Here are some things that are not a USP.
And while we are considering lists, here are some less than ideal things in business that could be a USP – note the strikethrough the S as they are not selling propositions but, rather, customer turnoffs that a retail business could become known for (in a bad way):
Here’s another list of some easy USPs:
It can be tough coming up with something genuinely unique. But, once you have it, it can be worth the work.
Take your time. Do it yourself. Be the leader your business will love.
