The latest issue of Men’s Style magazine is ideal for promoting away from the usual location – because of the Waleed Aly cover. Aly appeals to a demographic beyond those who might consider this magazine and this is why I suggest you move the title to get more people considering the purchase.
I like the ad inserted in Marie Claire magazine with the gold bubbles appearing out the top. It is different to the usual inserted card or ad, this should attract attention and get people noticing the ad. I also like the low profile – that it is not obscuring too much of the title behind.
I am in the middle of participating in user meetings around the country with my POS software company Tower Systems. Today, I am in Canberra, where I will meet with 20+ small business retailers.
These sessions are being attended by newsagents as well as owners of garden centres, jewellers, bike shops, gift shops and pet shops.
It is a thrill to see the retailers from different retail channels interact with each other, learn from each other, share experiences and find common challenges.
What is most interesting is what matters to newsagents. Whereas years ago newsagents would want to talk about magazines, newspapers and channel-specific issues, at these sessions newsagents are more likely to talk about retail business marketing, inventory management, webstore integration and accounting software integration. They are more likely to talk about the future rather than the past or today.
The newsagent conversation has changed.
Many newsagents are no longer obsessed with newsagency channel specific issues. They are talking about issues that matter to all small business retailers.
This is a good move. It means we have more retailers in our channel than newsagents. I love that.
In one meeting last week a newsagent had an excellent discussion with a bike shop owner, learning plenty about attracting shoppers back into the business. In the same discussion, the bike retailer learnt a couple of management ideas from the newsagent. The interaction was terrific.
There is little happening in the newsagency channel that warrants us being insular. We can learn plenty from retailers outside our channel and others who will pressure us to play beyond what has been traditional for a newsagency. This is where the future is: new traffic, higher margin products and deeper baskets.
At the heart of our businesses, retail is retail. Our challenges of chasing new traffic, employee management, marketing, shop floor efficiency – almost anything you name – are the challenges of other independent small business retailers.
Networking outside our traditional channel is good for us and our businesses based on what I am observing. It is a thrill to watch this change.
News Corp’s South Australian outpost is supporting Newspower stores with an AFL promotion.
This is unfortunate as Newspower outlets in SA are limited – 63 in the suburban area from what I can tell. Locals tell me the Advertiser is available in four or five times more retailers than this.
When you unpack the information, this appears to be an odd promotion: get your paper from location a but to get the value offer for the Footy16 magazine you have to get to a specific store. It is as if they wish to ration access to the deal. The alternative is they think the deal is so compelling it will result in a flood of people to Newspower stores.
When promotions are developed by companies like News Corp. they are well thought through with a specific outcome as the goal. This ensures all actions are deliberate and focussed on the goal.
It would be good to see the data for engagement yesterday at Newspower outlets, to understand what was in this for News and for the retailers.
Did News expect this promotion to drive traffic to Newspower stores compared to other retailers selling the Adelaide Advertiser? If so, what is the point? If not, what is the point?
I could not find any support from Newspower for the promotion. Usually with a supplier / marketing group promotion there is promotional activity from both sides, to maximize value.
News Corp. in SA has tended to run its own race when it comes to these things. This has not resulted in the Advertiser performing particularly better than other News Corp. titles so the going it alone approach does to seem to deliver commercial value from what I can see.
Non Newspower newsagents have every right, in my opinion, to be frustrated with News for this promotion.
Here is the promotion as it ran in the paper yesterday:
This large screen promotion of Saturday’s $21 million superdraw sits above a newsagency kiosk in a Sydney CBD centre.
If you have Star Wars Party Cakes I suggest you either place it next to weeklies with the full cover on show or you place it at the counter as your magazine of the week. This is a title people will purchase on impulse. For a few seconds work you could achieve valuable impulse purchases and sell out! This is a better outcome than having to return the title.
WH Smith, the UK public company operating newsagencies in high street, shopping centre, travel and other locations worldwide is expanding its presence in Australia.
Through its WH Smith branded businesses to company is delivering a best-practice retail experience. I anticipate we will see more of these stores open in malls and even on the high street as the company needs critical mass for its model to work in Australia.
The Wild branded businesses are changing too. WH Smith bought Wild well over a year ago and in the last few months the company has rolled out more changes through the group, most evident in company stores.
While not a gift shop I like personally, the WH Smith version of Wild appears to be popular from a mass perspective. It sells (bland?) safe mid range gifts.
Wild was at the Sydney gift fair chasing retailers to sign with the group. This is the strongest sign yet of their desire to expand the group in Australia.
I have heard of Wild franchisees who say they are unhappy with the direction of the group but that does not mean the model will not work in Australia. WH Smith appears to be backing the company with considerable resources to support expansion. You only have to visit the most recent store openings to see best-practice retail in action.
You can also see engagement by WH Smith and Wild through their supplier relationships. They are tapping into more local suppliers and this is creating competitive tension for nearby retailers and for the suppliers involved. I know of one supplier that could suffer as a consequence of their growing WH Smith relationship. It is affecting my own buying decisions for sure.
The part of the WH Smith business that appears to be shrinking is Supanews. This is to be expected given the state of Supanews when WH Smith purchased it from the Gaskin family. I guess the same is true with the Kennys / Giftology business as that was just about dead when purchased too.
From what I observe, the WH Smith and Wild businesses are the ones challenging newsagencies the most. Take time to check them out, especially if they trade near to you. Look at them carefully as they are well-structured businesses with sound processes, consistent buying and a growing presence that will build shopper recognition and confidence.
I was talking with a newsagent in Sydney today about their approach to labelling magazines. If they follow my advice they will cut their label printing by more than half. The money saved on labels and labelling with add to thousands over a year for this busy business.
In addition to the time and label cost savings, magazines will look better. take this copy of Yours magazine, it will look better without the label obscuring the masthead.
I urge newsagents to review the labels they print and to talk with their newsagency software company about cutting the labels printed.
You can still check off quantities received. Not labelling titles helps you eliminate a labour-intensive step in the process of putting magazines out. Every second saved makes magazines less of an overhead in the business.
A Twitter friend shared Tweet this with me just now. Made me laugh.
A doctor’s surgery with a magazine from 1993!
It does make me wonder about readership data given that some magazines can go round and round.
The most valuable magazine promotions are tactical promotions – deliberate placement of a title to drive impulse purchase. A successful tactical placement for us continues to be the placement of a pocket of That’s Life Word Search in front of That’s Life. We count how many we place in the pocket so we can be sure of the results.
A move like this takes a couple of minutes and, for us, it delivers an extra three to six copies purchased in a week. That is more valuable than some old school billboard-like magazine displays.
Most people purchasing the herald Sun in the newsagency on Saturday did not know about the free Shopkins cards as part of the News Corp. Top Trumps promotion. We asked and most times the response was what? or huh?. We had a few people come in to collect the cards but not many.
There was no discernible for the retail business from this promotion that I could see. There should be though as that is the goal of these promotions.
If you regularly put out newspaper and magazine posters, take a break for four weeks and measure the results. If there is no decline in sales you have just saved time and freed up space for more valuable marketing … or you have reduced the visual noise your business makes.
Take a careful look at the magazines you sell and pitch titles together to create a narrative unique to your business. For example, these three vintage themed magazines can be promoted together targeting vintage lovers while the titles themselves regularly sit in different categories of the magazine department.
One way we can grow magazine sales is to stop pitching them as traditional magazines.
A sales rep for a well-known gift supplier visited a newsagency last week and lied in order to get a sale. The newsagent made a call to verify the claim and discovered the lie. The rep lost the sale. When anyone makes a claim in support of a favourable decision from you: ask for proof.
We have moved newspapers from the entrance to the magazine aisle and replaced them with a selected range of magazines. Our focus on the top row, the row people notice first, is on titles unique to us, independent titles through which we pitch a point of difference.
The next shelf down is about eating healthy and the bottom shelf is about funky craft.
We have gone for titles with broad appeal.
It is essential magazine offers in newsagencies change regularly and that we do not engage in billboard type displays of magazines readily available in supermarkets. The more we promote titles unique to our channel the more attention we will get from publishers for the uniqueness of our channel.
We are leveraging the Pacific Magazines Nexus email marketing in-store. We have printed an email promoting Prevention and placed it with the magazine. This is so those who may have received the email are reminded of it while browsing. We love the Nexus email service. It is free. All 1,000+ newsagents in Nexus should use it.
Click on this image to see an email I received purporting to be from Australia Post. Checking the email address, the sender is lois@libero.it. This is not Australia Post.
If I clicked on the attachment in the email, the ZIP file, on a PC running Windows I would have been locked out of the computer and subject to a ransomware attack.
More and more newsagents are being affected by these malicious attacks, they are being locked out of their businesses.
You can avoid being hit by an attack by taking care with your emails.
If you are not sure of the sender, ignore the email. Tell everyone who has access to your email. Lay out your ground rules and demand discipline.
Most ransomware attacks can be avoided.
For protection, backup your hard disk to a location external to your business. This could be a removable drive or a cloud based backup service.
Backing up your data to the hard disk will not protect you as this will be locked out by the ransomware attack. I know of a retailer who was backing up to the hard disk drive in their computer as advised by a local IT tech. This was bad advice. They lost all their data.
Here is another example I received this afternoon at 4:45PM:
News overnight from Retail Newsagent in the UK:
Trinity Mirror announces retailer margin for 25p The New Day will be cut from 11.6p to 5.8p per copy.
While the new margin rate is reasonable as a percentage, it is unreasonable in monetary terms.
With real margins falling for small business retailers of newspapers here in Australia as well as the UK, we need to educate newspaper publishers to help them understand th real cost of these products in our businesses. We need to educate the through our actions.
Retail space is expensive as is labour. Costs are increasing here in Australia for both at close to 5% a year yet the real return we achieve from newspapers is falling.
Publishers address their own financial requirements through ad rates yet they squeeze small business retailers through cover price and permitted margin.
This is why newsagents are moving papers to locations that cost less and, in some cases, getting out of newspapers altogether. These moves are, in my vote, more important than any lobbying done by industry associations. Associations have failed on this for decades.
News Corp. is paying small business newsagents twenty cents per copy of The House of Wellness freebie handed out.
News Corp’s expectation is rooted in decades of history with our channel, history that is not so relevant today.
While some newsagents will like this type of campaign, most will not, they will see it as an annoying activity they have to undertake in the face of concerns at how News Corp. may treat them if they refuse.
For the twenty cents per copy, News Corp. expects newsagents to:
If this issue of The House of Wellness freebie is like the last issue, it is an advertising catalogue.
In my opinion, the twenty cents per copy is disrespectful. It does not provide reasonable compensation for what is expected. It is not a socially responsible payment from News for what they expect of newsagents.
My other concern is the disruption to the business promoting something of little or no relevance. The posters and wobblers are visual noise distracting from higher margin products newsagents can sell. We need less noise and not more.
Newsagents who will hand our the freebie might consider doing so without the posters and wobblers. I can understand that. Others while choose to not engage at all, and I can understand that.
News Corp. needs to be more respectful of newsagents in structuring these marketing activities for its clients. They need to price fairer compensation for newsagents. Otherwise, fewer newsagents will participate and, I suspect, more of the freebies will end up in the trash.
We are seeing a terrific shopper engagement with Easter products placed on the lease line. Unsurprising is the success of adorable rabbits. Grandparents especially love these as Easter gifts. Our best sales, however, have been collectible rabbits valued at $120.00 each.
This newsagency front window faces a busy capital city street. It represents a missed opportunity. In this city there are many magazine outlets – newsagencies, supermarkets and convenience stores. This low margin product window display is not pitching a point of difference.
If I had this shop I would be promoting unique and high-margin product to attract passers-by into the business – rather than using the valuable front window as a billboard for products readily available in many other retail outlets nearby.
Some people will complain about this post, saying I should not criticise a newsagent. Being silent does not serve the needs of our channel or this business. Staying silent is like giving up.
We can to do better than this photo shows.
Picking up on my post yesterday about what Coles is doing with Hallmark in its supermarkets, I write today to call on newsagents to exert more control themselves over the card departments in their own businesses.
It is unfortunate card companies for decades have taught newsagents to rely on them for management of many aspects of the card department from fixtures to layout to visual merchandising to even secondary card locations in-store. I think this strategy was all about grabbing and retaining real-estate in retail newsagencies. Newsagents, short on capital, often agreed.
What we require today is different because retail has changed, online and offline. You can see card companies changing to suit, but not enough in our channel.
Our shops are our shops. Responsibility ultimately lies with us. Too often newsagents point to a card company if sales are down and while they share the responsibility, they alone are not responsible.
We choose our suppliers, the location of cards, the total space allocated, how they are managed in-store, how employees interact with cards an more.
We are responsible.
It is up to us to manage card company relationships to best serve the needs of our businesses. We are better served to do this if we don’t owe them any money for capital works or investment.
At the heart of our decisions needs to be facts … as in business data, our business data, sell through data. This data should come from our systems and not from the card companies.
Dealing with facts can be difficult as the facts may contradict the personal relationships built up over many years in our businesses. This is where it can get tough. But you must not allow personal relationships to get in the way of facts.
For their part, card companies need to engage more actively with the newsagency channel as we offer them the best opportunity for commercially valuable growth in this marketplace.
If only there were enough people in the card companies with small business retail experience to see this.
Here is an update for newsagents from Gordon and Gotch on the transition from Network Services:
Thank you for your assistance and support in executing a successful transition and integration of the NSC business.
Calls to GGA
- As you can imagine, there has been an increase in the volume and length of calls to our National Contact Centre. We appreciate your patience as GGA staff work through the calls.
- As an alternative to calling, please email us at contactus@gordongotch.com.au
- Nexus and Connections Agents are reminded that there is a special queue for them in our Contact Centre, so be sure to select Option 3 from the menu at the outset.
Transition titles and returns
- The list of 92 transition titles are available at www.gordongotch.com.au/ggweb/XITChangeover.aspx
- The data to allow returns for these transition issues to GGA was generated over the last two weekends .
- If you have attempted to return one of these transition issues before Friday 4thMarch, you may have received a message on your returns acknowledgement stating “Title/Issue Code Is Not Valid For Any Product Invoiced To You”. If this is the case, please try again this week as your request would not have been processed.
- If you attempted to return one of these transition issues on or after Friday 4 March 2016 and received a message stating “Title/Issue Code Is Not Valid For Any Product Invoiced To You”, YOU WILL NOT NEED TO RE SUBMIT THAT RETURN ENTRYas your request would have been processed automatically on Monday after the second batch of data was loaded.
Physical returns
Two weeks ago you were advised of changes to GGA’s physical returns process. We thank you for your compliance. If you have any questions related to physical returns, please go to http://www.gordongotch.com.au/ggweb/physicalreturnsFAQs.aspx
I noticed this new Hallmark branded greeting card offer last night in an inner suburban Coles supermarket I check out every week or so. What is new is the two spinners at either end and the twenty-four pockets of $2 cards in the middle top tier of the unit.
The investment by Coles and Hallmark in this new approach demonstrates a focus by Coles in the greeting card category.
While some in various card companies will say we should not concern ourselves with Coles as a competitor, my view is this latest move in Coles shows we have to lift our own game in-store.
It is wrong in my mind to say Coles sells to a different card shopper. People may buy cards at Coles at different times but these people will also buy from newsagencies, at different times. This is why I am concerned about the Coles move, especially what appeared to be a stronger focus on the $2 cards.
We have to look at refreshing our own card offer.
Fixtures on the walls of most newsagencies are tired. They are the usual rake of pockets on the wall with cards laid out in the common way of birth to death and, often lifestyle in its own space. While some of us have experimented with full-face and integrated, not many newsagents have.
I think the newsagency greeting card approach today is pretty much the same as it was twenty years ago because card companies have not invested sufficiently in considering display alternatives for our channel and because too many newsagents have not taken initiative for themselves.
This has to change if we are to pursue and achieve card sales growth. We need to be more aware not only of Coles but of others in this space, especially kikki.K, Typo and the speciality businesses in the space.
I am tracking double-digit card sales growth year on year. I know others tracking excellent growth too. So there is good news out there in newsagencies. I suspect this growth could be intensified if we are even smarter in our card offers, if we play way outside what has been traditional for us.
I urge newsagents hearing about the Coles move to not get angry as that would be futile. Get even by pursuing a more current model card offer. Do this by managing the category for your success. Be demanding of yourselves and your card suppliers. That Coles is innovating with Hallmark is business. We need to respond in a business appropriate way.
Footnote: What I saw at Coles this week reminded me in part of a display a saw when I visited the Papyrus showroom at the Atlanta Gift Fair in January this year:
Another newsagent is being audited by the ATO as their ratios fall outside the ATO published benchmark. The problem is, the newsagent has not done anything wrong. They have not under reported income, employed people off the books or done anything to warrant the audit. Their only ‘crime’ is submitting end of financial year numbers that do not fit the ATO narrow model.
This poor business is now penalised with an expensive audit – for which the ATO will offer no compensation, even when they find the business has done nothing wrong.
It is appalling the ATO sets its benchmarks without reasonable industry consultation and triggers an audit without justification other than a comparison with their benchmarks.
An ATO audit of a business that has not done anything wrong is a further tax on the target business. For a small business using external accounting services the cost can be considerable. This is why I say the ATO ought to refund the real cost of complying with the audit request, so the ATO is financially responsible for its actions.
If they ATO had to pay for wasteful audits it might be encouraged to revisit its benchmarks and thereby trigger less unwarranted audits.
The problem with thenATO is they do not engage on any rinsable level when you try and discuss anything like this with them. They are your worst nightmare government bureaucracy. There is no consideration that they have done anything wrong and always a presumption of guilt, especially when it comes to small business.
I urge newsagents to read through the entire benchmark page and see whether you fit within the ATO expectations.