We have been promoting the Pacific Magazines Win a Car promotion on the lease line, facing into the mall.
We pocket count what we place in the stand. That way we can track its performance compared to the usual location for the promoted titles in-store. This front of store placement works every time we do it.
The stand is strong and slim, perfect for our tight space situation.
How many different Peppa Pig products do you have in your newsagency? For a solid Peppa Pig story to be pitched in-store you need twelve different products at the very least. Ideally, you will have more, like twenty-five plus to truly tap into the Peppa Pig opportunity, which is huge and lucrative by the way.
There are 201,000 searches online in Australia every month for Peppa Pig. That data is current, as at today, counting searches this year up to yesterday. You can add at least 100,000 Peppa Pig related searches. It is one of the most searched licences in Australia.
There are many factors driving this interest in the Peppa Pig licence including the TV show, books and the live show that is touring Australia right now. Significant worldwide growth is coming from Asian markets and this is also driving growth in interest here in Australia.
Books, plush, jigsaws, games, activity books and more are products we can tap into for this licence. These are all good products for our businesses, they fit well with a newsagency business today. A front of store display backed by regular social media posts can help us attract new shoppers to our businesses.
While national stores and discount variety stores do have Peppa Pig products, there are enough good-margin opportunities for us differentiate in range and display.
I urge newsagent to not ignore the Peppa Pig opportunity.
In the next couple of weeks, the cover price for plenty of News Corp. newspapers will increase. If this increase goes like the last one, there will be plenty of customers who complain.
Years ago, ten or fifteen at least, newsagents agitated for cover price increases. back then, newspapers were bigger and more valued. Today, with newspapers some days of the week as thin as a brochure, cover price increases are problematic because of less perceived value.
For our part all we can do is properly educate our customers, to ensure that we do not set the price and offer empathy for any customers who do complain.
On 774 ABC radio in Melbourne yesterday, a caller called the open line to express frustration at newspaper subscription arrangements. I’ll do my best to recount what they said.
The caller has been a newspaper subscriber for decades. They love the physical paper and enjoy digital access that comes with their subscription.
Their local newsagent decided to withdraw from home delivery. The subscriber was okay with that, expecting they could walk the few hundred metres to pick up the paper.
The frustration comes from the newspaper publisher refusing to fulfil the subscription through a pick up service from the newsagency and that it took multiple emails and calls to get even mediocre resolution.
The newspaper publisher refunded the unused portion of the subscription, requiring the long-term customer to now purchase over the counter at full price, and too pay separately for digital subscription.
The caller had sympathy for the newsagent. The frustration they expressed was at the newspaper publisher.
Here are my thoughts on this:
This scenario will happen more as more newsagents withdraw from newspaper home delivery. Publishers should have a more consistent subscriber friendly approach. I have never been given a good reason for newsagents not selling and offering newspaper subscription supported by over the counter collection.
If you know anyone looking for retail work in Melbourne please have them email me. There are several roles coming up. mark@towersystems.com.au.
With plastic bags about to banished by several national retailers and new rules to apply to degradable bags, time is short to have a new shopper bag strategy in place.
I know from my work with newsXpress that the issue is top of mind for consumer groups and engaged newsagents. I hope all marketing groups and other sources of plastic bags for newsagents are advanced in preparation. Time is of the essence here. now.
The approach by the supermarkets is helping to change shopper attitudes. It is when they came on board that the most significant shift occurred. The cynic in me says they became engaged once they realised how they could make money from the move. Regardless, every retailer needs a plan and stock ready to implement the plan.
The ban is an opportunity to review your approach to bags and, maybe, recast the image of your business.
Our expanded range of unique Christening, Confirmation and First Communion cards is helping is attract a broader range of shoppers for these occasions. However, like all special interest cards, you only maximise success by promoting the cards outside the business. That is what we are doing with an integrated online and physical campaign where we help people connect with the religious life occasions through the sharing of a greeting card, and maybe a gift.
The range in the photo is a small part of a bigger range that is not part of the usual everyday range you see in a newsagency. This point of difference is proving to be useful.
Greeting cards is a valuable category through which to pitch the newsagency. The return form a small investment can be considerable and valuable beyond a single sale. Too often this category is left by newsagents with the expectation that cards will sell themselves or that others will attract shoppers. I think it falls to us to do this work for our own businesses. Rewards are there to earn.
Cards work at the newsagency counter, as I have mentioned here plenty of time previously. If you are not pitching cards at the counter for impulse purchase you are missing out on certain sales.
The key to success is product choice. The cards need to look unique, be easily understood and be of a type people will purchase without an immediate use in mind. Here is an example of a card that works well:
I place no more than three cards, in a purpose made stand. I don’t distract from the placement with signage. I find it is better for the cards to speak for themselves.
We have to do anything possible to get more people buying cards and people buying more cards. It is an excellent margins category that can be more valuable for us. But it needs work, by us in-store.
There has been a long campaign against The Sun newspaper in the UK. Some newsagents refuse to stock it while some customers buy up all copies…
Ok – we’ve been here before. But tomorrow, once again, I will be going to the local newsagents, buying and burning their entire stock of Sun newspapers. Because those feeble minded enough to be affected by this should not be exposed to it. https://t.co/lhyVzAFkxI
— John Niven HQ (@estellecostanza) June 11, 2018
And burn them…
Anyway – here’s the newsagents entire stock of today’s Sun and Express. Them boys are sure burning good. pic.twitter.com/gzXF6PPxUz
— John Niven HQ (@estellecostanza) June 12, 2018
Check out this piece published by Fairfax:
Cardigan brigade
It is pretty tough for any bricks and mortar retailer at the moment as wave after wave of online players hit our shores.
And it is not just big department stores like Myer which are losing the commercial plot.
Our newsagents are also wringing their hands at the thought of losing their own lotto bonanza to online players like Lottoland, as well as the slow migration of Tatt’s lottery to online.
Luckily for our newsagents they’ve got the hilarious Australian Newsagency Blog to help ward off the online threat.
The blog, which appears to be backed by the Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association (ALNA), has some sage advice for newsagents on “ways lottery retailers could, through their actions, push back on Lottoland”.
This includes “always have the youngest person working at the lottery counter.” Make sure you provide free breath mints at the counter for staff, and “blokes should not wear cardigans or jumpers”.
CBD would like to pass on this advice to the new bosses at Myer and David Jones, they need all the advice they can get.
Here is my response, send by email to the journalist responsible:
Whither journalism?
Basic principles of journalism were ignored in the article, Cardigan Brigade, published by Fairfax yesterday.
The Australian Newsagency Blog was established by and is written solely by me. I have no affiliation with ALNA. That would be obvious from the About page on the blog and from a phone call to me, on my mobile phone number published on the blog.
In the article, Cardigan Brigade, your correspondent claims newsagents have a lotto bonanza. What is the basis for this claim? Where is the evidence? Had basic enquiries been undertaken about the income and required business costs your journalist would not have included the claim.
The blog post to which your correspondent refers includes vital context to my advice, context which you have ignored as it did not suit the narrative of your piece.
Shame on Fairfax for sloppy reporting, for misrepresenting my blog and for publishing false and misleading information about small business newsagents.
I have a question for you: what or who brought this blog post to your attention?
We are embracing the World Cup opportunities in the Herald Sun as part of a broader World Cup engagement. The dual value of this promotion is good for us and for newspaper sales.l Since we compete with two Coles supermarkets each 100 metres from the newsagency, our engagement is an opportunity to reinforce our business as the newspaper destination.
Through a range of products we serve the World Cup fans too. Cards at the counter are especially popular as they are easily added to an existing purchase. Careful buying of World Cup merch has helped us differentiate our businesses.
Check out this teacher gift display that I saw at a stationery / gift shop in the US a couple of days ago. Click on the image to see a larger version for detailed inspiration.
I like the display because of the variety of product and that it was placed to interrupt traffic flow.
I saw this display at the end of the season. The initial display, setup a month ago, was four times the size of what is in the photo.
Check out the compact, well sign-posted, magazine display at a US transit convenience outlet with magazines earlier this week. Notice the magazine title sponsored sign-posts.
I got to a Hudsons News Friday at LaGuardia airport and smiled on seeing the cover they place over their more raunchy titles. I suspect they have the titles in the wrong location as the weeklies seem to be better sellers in this store.
Staff at newsXpress Silver Sands in Western Australia were challenged in an armed robbery earlier this week. Here is the story of the confronting attack:
Watch the moment a man armed with a hammer, wearing a scuba diving mask was chased down in a citizen's arrest in Silver Sands.https://t.co/VlfISl5tvN
— Nine News Perth (@9NewsPerth) June 6, 2018
I was talking to a local butcher last week. They went cashless around three years ago. They commented that one reason they did this was to reduce the risk of robbery. It is an interesting discussion for retailers to have.
The launch issue of this new part series should sell out thanks to the TVC. The best way to leverage this is with front of store promotion. Basket data indicate partworks shoppers are more likely to purchase other items than regular magazine shoppers. Here is the TVC:
Check out the new partwork Knit & Stitch Creative Australian TVC – Part 1 on sale now for the low introductory price $1.99 – at newsagents @EaglemossLtd pic.twitter.com/eA5CQb5T0x
— Gordon and Gotch AUS (@Gordongotch_au) June 5, 2018
The Win A Car promotions from Pacific Magazines always work for us, driving traffic and sales. We leverage the opportunity with a terrific in-store display, which is matched by out of store marketing pitching the display so people visiting the centre have an opportunity to recognise it.
I encourage all newsagents in Nexus, the Pacific Magazines newsagent marketing program, to promote Win A Car.
Amazon recently announced they plan to block the sales of goods from its overseas sites to Australian shoppers because of new GST rules that apply from July 1, 2018, to items purchased overseas.
I think this issue will take time to play out. I say this based on Amazon being essentially a landlord for many businesses on its Marketplace platform. Those suppliers stand to miss out the most in that Amazon itself is already locating in its new Australian warehouse the items it is likely to ship from its own inventory.
Amazon Marketplace acts as a landlord with supplier pricing similarly structured to what we see from shopping centre landlords. There is a cost to place products on then platform and layers of other costs depending on services you leverage. However, it offers even more services.
For example, an Amazon Marketplace supplier can provide Amazon products for fulfilment by Amazon from Amazon warehouses.
The Amazon announcement that they will block purchases from overseas could result in overseas located Amazon Marketplace suppliers moving inventory to Australia for local fulfilment. That would be a win for Amazon as local fulfilment is a fee for service offer.
I expect that plenty of Amazon Marketplace suppliers are agitating Amazon re their announcement. If sufficient do complain, the company could address its apparent tech barrier to collecting the GST imposed by the Australian government. If these suppliers do not want to locate product at the Australian Amazon warehouse and if the business is important enough to them they will find another solution. If that solution cuts revenue Amazon wants, it will find a way to solve the problem.
Regardless, what actually happens will be driven by Australian consumer demand. The higher demand for a product the more likely it will be purchased by Australians through Amazon.
Amazon is a pragmatic, commercially driven, business. While their announcement last week was at first glance a shock, I can see ways this plays out well for the company, possibly helping it make more money without Australian consumers missing out on anything.
What does this have to do with newsagents? Plenty. This whole topic is at the heart of business discussions among large and small retailers today given the important of online in the retail mix. If the discussion feels foreign to you, there is much to learn about online and how it is impacting event consumer facing business around the world.
A long term newsagency family with two businesses was finding things tough. They had been trying to negotiate a solution to an expensive lease in a shopping centre, relying on help from an advisor with whom they had had a commercial relationship for such matters.
With each offer rejected and cash reserves perilously low, they decided to close the business. The landlord agreed.
They were shocked to discover a close business associate of their advisor, someone well connected with the company their advisor is part of, signed a lease for a newsagency business for the space they vacated, a considerably better lease than they were advised the landlord would agree to for them.
Their many years of work building goodwill for the business was lost when they gave up the tenancy. That goodwill is the gain of the party stepping into what was their space.
While I am no lawyer, here are questions one could ask the advisor, the business they are part of and the landlord:
I would also seek access to all correspondence, written and electronic, between landlord representatives, the advisor, the now new tenant and any related parties.
This could be a case worth litigating as I see it happening too often. It would only be through litigation that the matter could be properly and fully explored. However, our channel being what it is, individual newsagents rarely litigate.
Note: To avoid litigation against me and to protect those involved, identifying details of this story have been necessarily left out.
Here is a video I shot a few days ago where I explore the state of our channel an categories at the core of many businesses in our channel.
Several newsagents have reported being overloaded with Frankie magazine in recent months. Here is data from one store. Outside of the Christmas issue bump, the numbers are clear. The oversupply for issues 83 and 84 is obvious. Whoever is in control of setting supply, the publisher or Gotch, owes an explanation.
Other magazine publishers take note – oversupply like this gets newsagents cutting magazine space allocation. Based on the history for this business I’d say supply of 40 to 50 copies is reasonable. 115 is bad. 130 for the latest issue is ridiculous.
Newsagents face considerable costs in oversupply situations due to the out of date and broken magazine distribution model.
The usual go-to place for any discussion about reducing occupancy costs is the landlord. Retailers, including newsagents, blame their landlords for high occupancy costs.
The thing is, we all sign our leases. We all agree the terms of our leases. While leases from years ago can be problematic today, the challenges of our channel were obvious ten and more years ago.
Here is a list of things I think newsagents and other retailers could do to improve their occupancy cost situation where occupancy cost is the ratio of all lease related costs to revenue for products (and commission from agency lines). You should also assess it as a ratio of GP.
There are many steps one can take to improve the occupancy cost situation:
These are items you can action right away, regardless of your occupancy cost situation. Items 2 through 6 and tasks that should be core business activities you pursue relentlessly.
The cost of retail space is Australia is higher than most countries in the world. It needs to reset. However, the level of reset necessary will not happen as long as people keep signing leases that are not viable.
Here is how the opportunities I have outlined above can play out. I have two scenarios for you:
My core point here with this post is that as retailers we can take steps to buttress our businesses against high occupancy costs. However, to do this we need landlords to agree flexibility with what we sell as it will likely need to be outside the old-school permitted use clause for a newsagency.
There are those in this place and in our channel more broadly with strong opinions about what will work and what will not. Some even tell those in businesses and claiming success that what they claim is not possible. The thing is, we all live our own truth. For some, that is in what has happened in our businesses publicly while for others it is what we see happen daily without public disclosure.
Newsagents can run sustainable businesses in shopping centres as long as they have the right opportunities in their leases, the right approach to managing a retail business today and a love of change.
These months between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be challenging in retail businesses that rely on seasons. Here are some easy and cheap to implement ideas for promoting retail in these cold months:
None of this is brain surgery or all that innovative. Some of the ideas have been pitched here before at different times. My point is that right now, in the middle of Winter, we need to act to drive traffic, to make our shops warmer and more appealing … to get our communities talking about us.
Embrace Winter as something to celebrate. Give shoppers near your business a reason to visit.
Check out the ink and paper being invested in in the Cairns Post promoting the digital news delivery channel, as seen Tuesday this week.
On the front page…
Pages 10 and 11…
In the sports pages…
For the record, the publisher is doing what I would do if I were them. The circulation level for the paper along with a drop in ad revenue and increased production and distribution costs mean the question of closure of print is a discussion of timing only.
Newsagents need to be running businesses that do not rely whatsoever on newspaper customers and revenue for success.
Their latest Facebook ad in which it calls its product a lottery and transaction bets:
