Father’s Day cards have started selling and we are still a month away from the day. While not massive sales, early sales are enough to warrant our initial placement at the front of the newsagency. The photo shows not even a third of what we will have out by the time we are in full swing with the season. We have this stand on the lease line, facing into the mall.
I was disappointed to see the masthead of the latest Men’s Fitness magazine covered with a stuck-on ad for Anytime Fitness. With the Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness mastheads looking similar – red on white – I’d have avoided covering up a key differentiator – the word Fitness. The offer itself is not worth trashing your brand for.
If you’re Sydney based and a follower of Rupert Murdoch’s businesses and career you may want to see the David Williamson play Rupert. It’s on at the Theatre Royal in the city from late November. Rupert received good reviews when it first opened last year. Maybe we could rustle up a newsagent theatre night?
Please take my four-question survey for newsagents on early return behaviour and reasons: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KLBV87H
This is a marketing tip for a high street newsagency, a business with a footpath in front. Invite a local artist or local artists to create a locally themed footpath mural.
Plan in advance: get Council permission, send out flyers and turn the creation of the meal into an event. If getting an artist is a challenge, try the local school.
The goal is to create activity in front of your shop, show your sport for local artists and have fun. It makes your newsagent relevant to those who care about the local community.
The local newspaper and radio station should pick up on the event, especially with the art being of a local feature or event.
I am not suggesting you try and fur this into a commercial event as that should happen naturally with traffic generated. Sometimes, the most commercially effective events are those you do not set out to be commercial events.
The back room of a modern newsagency is not an ideal place of work. It’s away from the heart of the business, the shop floor.
Smart newsagents have reduced their use of a back room, transferring previous back room work to the shop floor and the shop counter, they have adjusted their buying so that stock needed arrives just in time to go straight onto the shop floor.
Using a back room less will often reduce the labour cost in the business and this is where real savings can be achieved. In your average newsagency business, an hour of adult rostered time saved is the same as selling $92.00 worth of magazines or $46.00 worth of gifts.
An better value of reducing back room focused work could be to not reduce rostered hours and instead focus the saved time on the shop floor. Good retail staff on the shop floor will drive sales and this is even more money in there bank.
Merely having a back room where work is done is an invitation to you and your employees to not be doing the one thing that makes the business most of its money – selling.
Use your back room as little as possible – if at all.
This photo shows half of the front of the newsagents as it is set for this weekend. On the left we have part of our Father’s day card range for early shoppers, next is sand that attracts kids and parents, next is the new line of scarves that started selling when we put them out Friday, next is beanie Boos that attract young girls and finally is a display of Pacific Magazines titles promoting the $5000 shopping spree competition.
It’s a little cramped but it is working, delivering good sales off each of the units yesterday and attracting terrific traffic from the mall into the newsagency during the course of the day.
Setting the front of the newsagency shop needs to be seen as a management responsibility and a key marketing activity.
A customer today told me that we charge too much for Yours and that they just paid $2. They bought the Australian Women’s Weekly and Yours at a Coles Express and got Yours for $2.00. They went back later and returned AWW using the refund to buy another title they actually wanted – meaning they got Yours for $2.00. They left reminding me that we charge too much for Yours. Thanks for that Coles & Bauer.
I have created a four question anonymous survey for newsagents on early return behaviour and reasons: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KLBV87H The results will be published here. You can see responses so far when you complete the survey.
Bauer Media is running another exclusive promotion in Woolworths. Over 28 days they are giving away a 28 Samsung TVs, one a day for the competition running period.
The total prize pool as noted in the rules is $83,972.00.
This is a lucrative competition to run in a single retail channel. Woolworths would have to be happy with the value it pitches to their customers.
While I wish Women’s Health was not bagged this month as it’s an often browsed title and because the gift covers the cover, the free make up bag should drive sales. We have it placed so the gift is easily seen. We have it is two locations for the first week – with health titles and with weeklies.
Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey sounded pathetic earlier this week when he moaned about poor support from business for the government’s budget.
Hockey has been reported as complaining that businesses and business groups need to support the budget more.
I own several small businesses and I do not support the budget. Here’s why:
The budget is based on a lie. There is deficit calamity. When you compare Australia to other OECD nations – indeed any developed world comparison – our budget, including its deficit – is healthy. Indeed, external assessments by respected commentators and authorities rate the fiscal health of Australia as handed over to the new government as excellent.
The budget argues against itself. Giving a quarter of a billion dollars to religious education and millions to free marriage counselling is the government interfering where it should not, engaging is exactly what it said governments should not do.
The budget does not fix what the government claims it fixes. The budget and the forward estimates do nothing to address the deficit.
The budget is unfair. Reducing money for those most vulnerable and increasing money for those least vulnerable is unfair. The GP co-payment is a dog-whistle in my view. The argument abut medical research is nonsense.
The budget continues our wasteful fear campaign. The billions spent by Labour and the even higher abounds spent by the conservatives on offshore processing and ‘protecting’ our borders bakes the worldwide refugee problem worse and not better in my view.
The politicians are out of touch. Preparedness to spend billing on paid parental leave is proof of this as is the spending under Liberal and Labour on VIP jets shows how little they want to connect with common folk.
I see next to nothing in the budget for small business and nothing whatsoever to encourage optimism in Australia.
Small businesses benefit most from spending by everyday Australians. I can;t see anything in this budget that will encourage everyday Australians to spend more.
We elect governments to lead and sure they will pick policies and spending priorities that suit them. Leadership, however, is about representing the whole country. I don’t see that in this budget. That’s why this business owner does not support it.
A rare apology from News Corp. for reprehensible behaviour in the Daily Telegraph where the newspaper used an image of a Boston booming victim a to accompany a juvenile attack on Mike Carlton and Fairfax and in doing so disrespecting all sides of the Middle East crisis.
I am surprised that anyone buys the Daily Telegraph as it’s not a good newspaper in my view.
We received the Your Brides Guide yesterday for the first time and I’m ready to early return the lot. However, as it’s a full copy return and bulk, I am going to give it a couple of weeks before I freight it back to Network at my cost (which sucks!!).
While the title comes with three months delayed billing, that does not give it any rights.
The publisher says, in a note with the title, Your Brides Guide is a High value publication with low space requirement. No it’s not. This title has a high space requirement. It does not fit in traditional magazine fixturing. Either I create something new or I place it with wedding gift lines off of which I make more than twice the gross profit.
The publisher says open up a copy in your newsagent and watch sales go through the roof. Really? First off, the business is a newsagency not a newsagent. The owner of the business sis a newsagent. You say sales will go through the roof yet offer no evidence to support your claim.
The publisher claims Almost $7 earned per copy sold. Based on shopping centre rent and given the space requirements of the title – especially if I open a copy like they want – I would need to sell two copies a week just to pay for the space it would take. The earnings comment from the publisher shows little understanding of the operating costs of many newsagency businesses.
For this title to be of any real interest I need to be making at least $14.00 per issue and preferably more.
More newsagents will reduce their magazine focus if the numbers continue to fail like they do for Your Brides Guide.
The big story of the day in Victoria is the tragic death of three people killed in an accident involving a BP fuel delivery truck. The photo accompanying this front page store in today’s herald Sun newspaper has been obscured by a stuck on ad promoting the BBC earth series which starts with the Herald Sun tomorrow.
The placement of the ad is disrespectful to the families of those killed in the tragedy.
The Better Homes and Gardens branded Chocolate Heaven one-shot is a tasty title. One customer yesterday said to me I could eat every page. People are passionate about chocolate!
We have it next to BHG as well as copies with food titles and copies next to newspapers.
Having this title where they are likely to purchase on impulse is crucial to our success.
Gold fans who appreciate the skills of Graeme McDowell are more likely to purchase both Golf Magazine and Better Golfer Australia if they are placed together given he’s on the cover of both.
Attention to placement can drive magazine sales.
The latest issue of New Scientist magazine looks at home with diet and fitness titles thanks to the cover story about 40 years of dietary advice. I expect we will some impulse purchases from this off-location placement.
I had a some spare time at the T3 terminal of Sydney Airport yesterday mid morning and counted almost twice as many copies of The Australian newspaper available for free than total copies of the Australian Financial Review, the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald.
While the photo shows one of of several locations of papers in the Qantas Club lounge, it was at the boarding gates where there was a huge difference.
I don’t get why they have so many newspapers being given away. I often see people take a paper, quickly scan it and then bin it. Is that a sale? If I was an advertiser relying on circulation data I’d hope not.
We have placed the one-shot – The Complete Illustrated History of World War 1 – next to People’s Friend as both appeal to the same customer. I am confident of getting impulse purchases of the WW1 title by People’s Friend customers.
Simple moves like this ware another way we can drive magazine sales. Supermarket staff would never take this type of initiative – unless they are reading this and have both titles in-store.
Every newsagent in Australia ought to read Supermarket Monsters by Malcolm Knox in the latest issue of The Monthly.
The article goes to the heart of our mission of newsagents – to stop supermarkets taking our retail channel in their quest to gobble up independent retailers in Australia.
Once you’s read the article, share it with your staff. Put a copy on your noticeboard to remind you of your mission.
This article is an excellent example of why The Monthly is an important publication in Australia. It covers issues in a depth and clarity about which Australians need to know.
UK Channel 4 current affairs Dispatches program is running a fascinating series on UK supermarkets which I highly recommend.
I could not see it on any Australian Tv schedule so I downloaded it through EZTV. The program is interesting as it gives some hope to the power of the major supermarket groups. This is relevant in Australia because we are in the middle of cycle of management in our supermarket duopoly that has been driven by UK supermarket experts.
There are other episodes in the series on supermarkets – they look equally fascinating.
Every retailer wants unique products that no other retailers nearby have. I have heard plenty get upset when a nearby retailer sources the same product. Good visual merchandising can help you tell a different story with the same product, it can help you pitch to a different customer.
My experience is that investing time in purchasing merchandising props can deliver an equal or better outcome than in the stock itself.
Unusual props used creatively can give you a unique traffic-generating story that turns inventory investment into cash in the bank sooner.
We look far and wide for props with which we can create in-store theatre of which we can be proud.
The days of putting products on the shelves are over. We have excellent competitors and we need to do better than them.
The message in Australia Post retail outlets through to their vehicles is that the government owned organisation is focused on online. Their leveraging of their retail and vehicle network provides them a low-cost platform from which to pitch for business and compete with other players in this parcel space.
Just Kiddin is a small Melbourne based business – offering Australian designed tents that are ideal for the newsagency customer.
Weighing close to only 1kg, these tents can be displayed in almost any situation from the floor to the ceiling. They sell easily. They also support a terrific margin.
We have had them for a year and I’m thrilled with the result.