Here’s another simple placement that drives calendar sales – this time puzzle themed calendars with crossword and puzzle magazines. I’ve seen shoppers come in to spend Under $10 and walk out spending $30. Tactical placement drives a deeper basket.
Further to my post Saturday about a newsagency employee stealing from customers for lunch money, I have had calls today from two different newsagency businesses about theft. One was suspected employee theft over the last three months amounting to $9,000 – the cost of the second hand car the employee just purchased – and the other was from a supplier rep who short-changed returns credits over the last couple of years costing the business an estimated $8,000.
People steal because they think they can get away with it. The tighter your processes the less opportunity they have and the less likely they will steal.
It’s on you.
Stella magazine is a niche title aimed at a Pacific Islander audience. The print run is too small to justify distribution through traditional routes. The publisher is keen for advice on how to reach the right newsagents with this special interest title and I offered to pitch it here. You can contact the editor, Amanda Donigi, here: editor@pacificpencil.com.
Having a good selection of special interest titles serving interests of shoppers local to us is important to our future in the magazine space, especially titles supermarkets and convenience stores are not likely to offer.
21st Century Media, through distributor IPS, next Saturday launches Australian National Review, the print version of it’s news website 21st Century News.Here is a video which positions the new newspaper:
Saturdays are the print media battleground of the month.
This 2015 Walking Dead desktop calendar is an excellent opportunity of thoughtful buying to drive calendar sales. The new series of the TV show has just launched to extraordinary ratings. Now is the perfect time to pitch this calendar.
Having licenced calendars is a key factor on our 2015 calendar sales being up 150% on last year. There are three simple steps to making excellent money from calendars:
Calendars are an example of where we can make our own success.
We have this miniature licenced Rolling Stones merchandise as a feature among our male gifts. It’s part of a broader rand of licenced products from several suppliers that we have sourced for music fans and for collectors of specific licenced merchandise.
We sell cards for guys so why not gifts?! Too often I hear newsagents say male gifts are a challenge. They not if you think about it laterally. Male gifts are not as obvious nor is the segment as well served as is the case with female focussed gifts.
Get your male gifts right and sales surge as gift shops often ignore the opportunity.
We are embracing the opportunity to the golden era of Doctor Who coverage by placing magazines together based on cover story more than masthead. SciFiNow will be browsed by more shoppers as a result of this.
Check out the ABC story about a new magazine published out of a start up business in Wollongong. NSW. Future Perfect is in the same genre as Smith Journal – long form articles.
I missed the SMH article – Supermarkets major players in magazine market with readers hungry for free food content – when it was published two weeks ago. It looks at an important competitor to magazines we sell and offers telling statistics:
The figures mirror Roy Morgan Research, which said Coles Magazine was the best-read magazine in the year to June, with 2.9 million readers per average issue, while readership of Fresh was up 30 per cent year-on-year to 2.2 million.
Are digital magazines dead? in Wired magazine is not so much abut the question as it is an explanation that the medium is in its infancy and so it’s too early to speculate.
Create a survey and invite shoppers and others in your community. Ensure the survey is relevant to them and to your business. Keep it simple. Provide the opportunity for their contact details in return of a small prize opportunity. Note on the survey the opportunity to opt out of future marketing.
Use the survey to find out things you did not know. For example, ask shoppers to rank product licences – this could guide your buying. Ask them to tell you who they purchase gifts for: male / female; age ranges; distance from the town. Ask them to vote for their favourite gift out of ten you include on a voting slip. Ask them to tell you how many cards they currently purchase each year. Ask them to list what they would like to be able to purchase at your shop that they cannot purchase today.
Don’t ask all these questions. Choose a theme for your survey and build questions around that. Genuinely seek to discover things you do not know about your customers and their interests today. The responses should help you in your business planning and product purchasing.
Promote the survey in-store, across the counter and even in letterbox flyers. Pitch is such that locals know you are genuinely interested in their opinions.
What your customers on the wall behind your counter? If you this space to store items you cannot fit on the shop floor like me, set the items you are storing for impact, to drive sales.
We store POP! VINYLS behind the counter. Rather than stacking them as you would in a storeroom we placed them facing customers and added a sign to leverage the well-known POP! VINYL brand.
We need to leverage space in our businesses. We need to be thoughtful in our choices, including items where people will notice them and where they will be open to purchasing.
I have found licenced products work at the counter, driving impulse purchases. The Pop Vinyls are all well-known licences and therefore easily understood and purchased in addition to the destination purchase.
When I write that we create our own success (and failure) as I do often here, this post is a good example of that. We turned a storage necessity that initially was not ideal into an opportunity that is playing out to impulse purchases.
A shopkeeper would have stored the items as storage whereas a retailer would turn the problem into sales.
While the Victorian Labor Government screwed up the introduction of Intralot in 2007, they are not to blame for the $63M loss by Intralot in my view. The blame for the loss rests with Intralot for poor management, Tatts for their sales counter land grab and several independent authorities that permitted small business newsagents to be treated in such a way that cost them millions in business costs and lost sales. In my view, many were involved in this mess, not just the Labor government.
I say the News Corp coverage is biased because they have not addressed the inaction by the Liberal government in their four years in power. If Labor is responsible for what happened from 2007, the Liberals are responsible from 2010.
Politicians on all sides let newsagents down. They left us to defend ourselves against extraordinary bullying by Tatts that cost us millions in capital and much more in lost sales. Newsagents lost while many parties, including News, stood by and watched as this happened.
At the heart of the issue was how we used the scratch ticket bays in our Tatts shop fit. The logical approach would have been to sell Intralot scratch tickets from here. Tatts said no. Newsagents were left with expensive real-estate that could not be converted to commercial use. To make things worse, we had to find space elsewhere at the counter, away from the Tatts real estate, for Intralot equipment and materials.
So here we are in a retail lease that we pay for and Tatts is in control, denying us an opportunity to operate commercially. No one knew that Tatts would behave as they did until Intralot started installing. Newsagents were left to fend for themselves.
Professional reporting would have included an analysis if scratch ticket sales around Australia fro 2007 to today and thorough comparison or a monopoly lottery situation versus the more competitive environment. While I don’t know what such investigation would have revealed, the report by News today is incomplete and, in my view, biased.
It was a customer who first noticed that an employee in a newsagency was short changing sales by ten or twenty cents. Some careful detective work soon revealed that it was being done in the morning, up to the lunch break.
When confronted, the employee protested that they weren’t stealing from the business. They withheld ten or twenty cents from enough sales to get to the $8.00 a day they spent on lunch.
We’re saving for a house and I can’t afford to buy my lunch is what I am told the employee said in justification for their action. And yes, they did say I never stole from you when they admitted short-changing customers. Oh and they never took more than $8.00 a day – they fought that made it okay.
It took a while to get the money shot on the security system, evidence of the employee removing cash from the register and putting it in their pocket – in time for lunch. Breathtaking!
While this is not theft on the scale I have often seen in newsagencies it is as serious and as damaging of the business and its customers.
Newsagents need a zero tolerance approach to theft. One way of driving this involved proper use of your software when it comes to transacting sales and managing change to be given.
Our 2015 season calendar sales are up 150% on this time last year and that is off an excellent base of 2013 sales.
We are driving sales with placement of an excellent range of carefully selected calendars at the front of the store, on the lease line, facing into the mall.
The sales growth is from right across the range of titles and from large and smaller format calendars.
This success is an example of creating our own success through data analysis, thorough planning and smart shop floor retailing.
It’s unlikely newsagents would get 150% growth in calendar sales from relying on magazine companies. You would certainly not get the 65% gross profit.
Any newsagent can achieve the calendar success I am describing here. I am aware of a newsagency in country Victoria enjoying this success and another in a regional shopping centre in a highly competitive situation enjoying the same success. These newsagents, too, have planned and managed for their success.
We have to own our situation. I write that many times, I hope it’s getting through. Every retail newsagent can grow their business. Yes, it’s hard work. We owe it to ourselves, our families, our employees and those we serve to do this.
The Christmas issue of Family Circle magazine goes off each year. We have it placed with food titles, weeklies and in the location you can see in the photo – in the Better Homes and Gardens themed floor display unit from Pacific Magazines.
We’re investing the space because we know we will get the sales. Family Circle is highly sought after in my experience. Check where your stock is located.
I noticed this pack of Take 5 and Yours from Bauer Media priced at the discounted rate of $5.95 in Coles yesterday. We received 7 packs and returned them the same day. It feels like these discounted bags are appearing with more frequently.
At the ANF’s National Newsagent blog this week, under the headline of My heart bleeds for these newsagents, the ANF published a letter from a Western Australian newsagent about magazine supply issues including oversupply. Rather than providing leadership on the issue, what is supposed to be the peak body of the newsagency channel offers emotion and “sympathy”.
This post from the ANF reflects the extraordinary failure of the ANF to serve newsagents. It shows why newsagents should save their money and cancel their membership of this organisation which is bereft of ideas for addressing the single most important issue facing newsagents, as voted by newsagents.
The ANF opens the post, before publishing the letter, with:
… and all the other newsagents who write in with the same story. It is so depressing that such distribution practices almost bring these small businesses down and cause them turn away from magazines. What do you think they should do?
Saying it is depressing is unhelpful. Asking newsagents what to do is ridiculous – you know what they think. This was your moment to be a leader!
The ANF representative says in one comment at the end of the post that the ANF is working strategically with the MPA. My understanding is that the MPA has been working for some time and only recently has the ANF become involved. That project, while welcome, is unlikely to address what newsagents need addressed.
Here is what I would have said to the newsagent had they written to me as they did to the ANF.
Dear newsagent,
Thank you for sharing your story. It is one we hear often. Your situation is not unique. The vast majority of newsagents face similar competition pressures.
While it can be hard to confront, you need to face your situation with the knowledge that you chose this, you chose to purchase your business, you chose to sign the magazine supply contracts. I will do everything possible to help, but resolving your situation starts and ends with you.
Lobbying government will not help as politicians care less about small business. Sure they will sit and listen to us but they will not change legislation for us. The ACCC, too, over the years has proved good at listening and a failure at even trying to understand the unfair competitive situation in which we find ourselves.
At the core of the magazine distribution system is a set of practices imposed on newsagents by magazine distributors that are from an era of regulation, monopoly, where they were appropriate. In 1999, when the distribution of magazines were deregulated, those involved, including the ANF at the time, agreed a framework that disadvantaged newsagents. That framework continues today. It is unlikely you or anyone can change it. So, your focus has to be on mitigating your own situation.
The only parties with which you have a contract are the magazine distributors. They need to be the focus of your attention. They are tricking companies, paid for each parcel they shift through their warehouses and on the vehicles they contract. The more parcels they shift the more money they make. It suits their business model to move as many parcels as possible and care less about why they are moving parcels.
In your letter, you mention subscriptions. Let go of this. They have always existed and will always exist. They chase a different shopper. Yes, they are cheaper. However, those buying them are not likely to be your customer. Worry more about what you can change.
With all due respect, you need to take the emotion out of the situation. For example, your question Lastly do these companies understand how many hours a week we devote to their magazines in our stores? is not relevant to any discussion on oversupply. Yes, I understand you invest more time than is warranted and that if this were added to your business costs, magazines would most likely be loss making.
Take the emotion out of your letter and start again.
If you are being consistently oversupplied, write to the offending distributor(s) and seek a change in behaviour. Ask for a response in seven days. Provide examples where you have received more than 50% above what you would reasonably sell of a title. Explain that this consistent oversupply is, in your view, unfair treatment of your small business and that you feel powerless to alter their behaviour. Ask for a review of supply to terms you consider are acceptable.
While they consider your letter, gather your evidence. Use your computer system to produce a sell through rates report by distributor. If this shows long-term gross oversupply, it becomes vital evidence for your next step. If you don’t have a computer system you will need to manually gather the evidence.
Once the seven days is up, take the matter to the Small Business Commissioner, apply to have your dispute mediated. This will bring you and those you complain about to the table. You should file a separate request for each distributor if you have evidence of sustained misbehaviour.
Send a copy of your correspondence to the distributors and your evidence to the ACCC with a covering letter explaining what the reports show – sustained oversupply of product that makes your independent small business less competitive than your nearby supermarkets.
Stick to the facts. Use the state and federal government departments but always communicate with them on the basis of facts.
While you do all of this, plan for your future. Create a newsagency that brings in traffic for items outside newspapers, magazines and lotteries. Create a business that is known for other things over which you have more control.
I know of newsagencies in towns of 2,500 people where the businesses are enjoying excellent growth. It can be achieved by you being a leader of your business.
Complaining cannot be part of a business plan. A business plan requires tangible action points. In this letter I outline specific actions you can take. I will gladly help you with any of the steps covered. But remember, no emotion. regardless of your faith, remembering the Serenity Prayer can be useful through this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.
If you know who wrote to the ANF, please pass this letter on to them. Let them know I’d gladly help them through the steps outlined.
Newsagents can achieve more individually on the issue of magazine oversupply than they think. It takes planning and commitment. It requires a whole of business approach not only to magazines but what else you could do to bring traffic into the shop.
The issues outlined by the newsagent in Western Australia are not new. The ANF has held countless meetings and strategy sessions on the issues. It has achieved nothing. It is time for newsagents to deal with these issues themselves.
See how this retailer in a mall in Guangzhou, China has used a tree to bring the outdoors inside and make their shop more appealing. This mall is completely underground. There is no natural light. Space is tight. Click on the image, see the detail.
Check out the shop front created from old coat hangers that I saw in Guangzhou, China earlier this week. In a mall with more than 1,000 retail outlet, gaining shopper attention is challenging. This stands out for their different shop front and clever use of hangers.
This retailer in Guangzhou, China sells cheap home brand products. Prices are a third of similar items elsewhere. The shop fit, layout and store operations reflect quality. You only notice low prices when you look at specific items. This is a smart way to sell on price.
fang suo commune in Guangzhou, China is a stunning retail business. It’s a bookshop, magazine shop, gift shop, stationery shop, clothes shop and coffee shop. Oh, and it’s an art gallery – all in the one large open space in a premium shopping mall.
It was quiet, even at the sales counter. The product mix was eclectic and interesting and the staff attentive.
fang suo commune is the best bookshop I have ever seen. Their coffee is among the best I have had. If I lived locally, this is where I would do Christmas shopping.
Here is an example of their approach too magazines. You walk through the tunnel and there are magazines on the inside walls. They have magazines on the outside walls as well. Do not be mistaken by the photo. The experience, live in the space, is extraordinary.
I never expected I would suggest retailers look at retail in Guangzhou, China for inspiration. Having been to fang suo commune and many other shops I’d suggest we have plenty to learn from such a competitive and innovative retail situation.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have seen tis.
I met with Chris Leach the CEO of XchangeIT today as part of a regular discussion Chris has with the various newsagency software companies.
I took the opportunity to express concern that newsagents are pressured to provide accurate sales data yet we see little benefit in return.
While it is outside his purview, Chris listened as I outlined the magazine supply issues I have canvassed here on this blog this week and previously. I made the point that the failure of magazine distributors to supply based on accurate sales data leaves newsagents questioning the value of providing accurate sales data and the impact this has on perceptions of XchangeIT.
The shareholders of XchangeIT – magazine distributors and the ANF – need to affect change by magazine distributors if they are to have newsagents provide access to more accurate data.
They need to ensure that newsagents are supplied based on sales data and not supplied to serve the commercial interests of distributors.
The examples this week of gross oversupply of Top Gear reflect a disregard for good data provided by newsagents through XchangeIT. The supply by Bauer of unwarranted extra stock besmirches the reputation of XchangeIT. It is disappointing that those involved appear to be uninterested.
A newsagents who recently got pinged by XchangeIT for failing to meet their standards expressed anger at abuse of their business by the imagine distributors for overloading them with stock.
Digging into the situation, there was no issue with data quality, just timing. So, the distributors receive accurate sales and return data but it is not always delivered the same day.
In the data from the business I can see more than 60% of titles are oversupplied. That is, for more than 60% of titles this business receives 50% or more stock than they would usually sell.
No wonder the newsagent does’t trust XchangeIT. It is supposed to lead to fairer data-based allocations. That is clearly not the case.
With newsagents more acutely aware of business performance at the product category level than at any time in their past, it is reasonable that the performance of XchangeIT come into scrutiny. All of the attention to accurately recording sales and returns has to play out as a business outcome at some point. Unfortunately, for too many newsagents, the outcome is continued oversupply.
The risk is that newsagents will care less and less about magazines and about XchangeIT – unless this is resolved. But what does resolution look like?
Newsagents deserve:
Magazine distributors hold newsagents accountable for their level of indebtedness yet they provide no reasonable mechanisms through which we can control our level of indebtedness. Oversupply is akin to them taking interest free loans from us without permission.
News Corp. has advised newsagents in South Australia that it will remove price protection for home delivered product within weeks. Here is the advice the company provided newsagents:
Please note that News Corp has decided to remove the price protect for home delivery customers with the forthcoming price increase for the Sunday Mail on Nov 2, 2014. Thus, please charge full price for all home delivery customers from Monday October 27. At the same your rate for agent collect flat wrap copies will rise to the same as the retail papers.
Many years ago newsagents told News that home delivery customers were not concerned about price for the quality premium service. It will be interesting to see what customers think today with the status of newspapers now compared to then so different.