I love the new range of Happy Traveller products from TNW. We have them outside our travel section facing into the dance floor so that more shoppers can see them. They’re a good value easy impulse purchase item. They also bring colour and a good vibe to the shop.
Supplier funded stands ought to be used to promote products from that supplier.
Using a supplier stand to promote products from another supplier disrespects the relationship.
In one newsagency I saw recently half the double-sided stand was being used to promote competitor products. The risk is the supplier removes a useful stand.
Newsagents have an opportunity in the closure of Crazy Clark’s stores – not so much in the deep discount space as that’s a war zone but more in the art supplies space and some stationery products. I’d suggest to nay newsagent near a Crazy Clark’s to consider responding to the closure with a new product offer to tap into that shopper.
With local papers carrying stories about the Crazy Clark’s closure there is an opportunity to remind shoppers to support your local business.
This week I am calling out five basic areas of retailing where some newsagents make the rest of us look bad. I am writing about these five areas because in the minds of plenty of Australian shoppers all newsagencies are as bad as the worst one they have visited.
COMFORT
Comfort in retail is important. The less comfortable an experience the less time a shopper will want to spend in the store.
By comfort I mean: temperature, accessibility, cleanliness and basic safety.
I was in a newsagency recently where the carpet was ripped in parts such that it would be easy to trip. In another the bare floorboards were splintering. And in another the floor looked like it had not been cleaned in months.
In each of these examples the comfort of shoppers was impacted in such a way that I suspect it plays out negatively on sales.
We need to provide a comfortable and enjoyable space where shoppers love to shop. This means a clean and safe floor, an in-store temperature appropriate to the season, an easy to navigate layout and an overall situation your shoppers enjoy.
We all need to take a more critical view of our shops and ensure we provide our shoppers with a competitively good experience.
By focusing on newer style wedding magazines as the feature titles in this segment of the magazine department we are pitching to a shopper different to the more traditional newsagency shopper. We place these more current looking titles at the front of wedding magazines as they better represent our future in our view. Sales are strong – our customers must agree.
I don’t see any reason for newsagents to label weekly magazine. It wastes time and money. In the example in the photo the large label in the top left corner also partially obscures the Who magazine masthead.
I’ve never labelled weekly magazines.
I spotted Men’s Fitness and Zoo discounted by $3 at a Coles Express yesterday if you purchase both. It’s pitched as part of their down down campaign. I can’t believe that Bauer wants to divert regular magazine shoppers from supermarkets to Coles but I that is what offers like this do in my view – they educate shoppers to chase the discount.
Going through some old papers on the weekend I came across this clipping from The Australian Financial Review from June 7, 2005. I responded at the time with a letter which was not published.
I agreed with their thesis that we should be exposed to free market competitive pressures but noted that many anti-competitive pre deregulation supply practices disadvantaged newsagents. This anti-competitive behaviour by some suppliers continues today.
This week I am going to call out five basic areas of retailing where some newsagents make the rest of us look bad. I am writing about these five areas because in the minds of plenty of Australian shoppers all newsagencies are as bad as the worst one they have visited.
LIGHTING
If you business is a convenience newsagency your lighting needs to be bright inside and out. Your shop has to shine in the street like a lighthouse – drawing people in.
If your business is a gift shop newsagency you need to offer mode lighting that reflects the feel you want for your business.
If your newsagency is a traditional newsagency promoting cards, magazines, stationery and lottery products then each area should be lit appropriately to the category and consistently.
Too many newsagencies I see are dark and unwelcoming. Too often some lights are recent while others are old. Old shoppers have trouble browsing cards and magazines because of poor lighting. Brightly coloured product designed to pop with good lighting fails to pop because of poor lighting.
While lighting costs money, the investment should help you sell more product.
As a retail channel we need to do better on lighting our shops.
We are preparing to reduce magazine space in my newsagency without reducing the number of titles we carry. Our magazine unit sales April through June were up 13% on 2013 and weeklies up 11%. Reducing range is not an option.
We have developed a layout plan change that allows us to cut magazine floor space allocation by 25%, freeing this space for higher margin product while at the same time chasing continued magazine sales growth.
Too often I see newsagents cut magazine space without having a plan for what comes next. In our case the plan for what comes next guided us to the decision to cut space. Our magazine sales growth ensured we planned to do this in a way that did not harm magazine sales.
Magazines continue to be a key traffic driver for newsagencies. We need to approach any change thoughtfully.
The poster provided for promoting The Saturday Paper this past weekend was attention-grabbing and current. It reminded me of like newspaper posters we used to see years ago from Fairfax and News. We used it. It caused comment – like a good promotional poster does. Good stuff.
Footnote: I tweeted about this poster yesterday and it was retweeted element times – reaching many thousands more than my 579 Twitter followers. That experience was a reminder of the viral nature of social media.
While I suspect the spelling on the sign is a mistake I found myself wondering if it was deliberate. It got me looking at the product. While I should not draw attention to spelling to typo errors – as I make plenty here – this one is pretty special or is that specila?
There was a time when newsagents could rely on selling their business for a handsome increase on the price they paid thereby providing a good pay day. No more. Today, the best way to extract value from our businesses is to make every day your pay day.
The challenge is how do you do this?
We have to look at our newsagency businesses differently. We have to look at them and manage them as any other retailer runs their business – for maximum profit every day.
Newsagents have to stop being servants (agents) and start being retailers and entrepreneurs focused on profit.
Focussing on profit today will give you a better result today and make your business more valuable tomorrow. Without a doubt.
Here are some suggestions for making every day your pay day:
Be responsible for the profitability of your business. Don’t blame your suppliers, your landlord, your employees or some other external factor … it all comes down to you – the decisions you make and the actions you take.
If you relentlessly pursue profit with a clear focus you;pre likely to see profit grow. That’s better than waiting to make money when you sell because that’s less likely to happen in this market.
One way newsagents can attract new shoppers is to become a trusted outlet for collectible lines. There any many such lines available in our channel.
Take the TY brand for example, if you carry a good range of TY product, brad it professionally in-store and train your staff on the traditional TY shopper and what interests them you have set yourself up to leverage existing strong interest.
Once you are setup you can then connect to the TY community through social media and through this attract TY collectors and fans to your shop.
I know newsagents doing this today for a range of well-known brands with excellent success. Such brand connected marketing through social media is free or close to free.
Footnote: brand passionate shoppers will spend on other products in your business as their trust in your business grows.
The East Maitland Mercury is running a series: meet your local newsagents. Check out the first instalment here. This is terrific support from a newspaper publisher for our channel and the specific businesses they profile.
I have heard from several newsagents this week of poor to non existent customer service from Fairfax regarding supply issues. If newsagents are not getting responses and assistance from fairfax to queries regarding selling their product then how bas is it for customers calling about a single copy?
What’s been your fairfax customer service experience?
As part of the school holidays floorspace shuffle we placed the floor display unit with Hallmark AFL licenced cards,wrap and gifts in our guay magazine nook at the end of our main magazine aisle. The change in location delivered a sales kick as people who were browsing magazines discovered the AFL brand. This approach works particularly well on AFL crazy Melbourne.
Constantly moving floor display units around is a valuable way to drive sales. It’s what gift shops do and we need to as well given that we are competing more and more in this space.
The traditional newsagency shop floor management approach of set and forget is something we need to forget.
Who said we need to define stationery in strict boundaries. We’ve had these vegetable pens on the shop floor for a couple of days and they are drawing plenty of attention. They are a fun product and a different way to present a staple stationery line. Right now, we have many non-traditional pens offered as gifts and they’re selling – usually purchased as last minute gifts.
Playing in this space is another way to support stationery sales.
While the publisher of Good Chef Bad Chef let newsagents control supply of the popular cookbook, Bauer send another expensive title this week without newsagent engagement. I’d have said no thanks to the $29.95 cookbook – The BEST-EVER Collection. Instead, it’s been sent out only to have us not put it on the shelves due to lack of space and a wrong price point for us in the cookbook segment. Bauer is big enough to offer newsagents an online portal through which we can control supply and therefore not burn energy with stock coming out and going back for no economic benefit for us or the publisher. Nuts.
Narooma News published a comment piece this week about partworks that’s worth a read.
The Sun newspaper is offering free loom bands with its newspaper Friday (UK time). If loom bands are still hot in the UK this is a terrific offer and is certain to drive sales.
Deals like this leveraging kid-friendly fashion trends work.
Another newsagent has been hit by a UKASH scam with someone calling the business claiming to represent what they called epay services. They were aggressive and demanding, telling the staff member to print two UKASH $300 vouchers. They knew the voucher serial numbers which is particularly disturbing and is being investigated by several parties right now.
No one from epay or Touch would ever call your business asking you to print a voucher. Tell your staff.
Every business needs a complaint handling process – one that is structured, clear and understood. A good complain handling process will give the complainant confidence and the recipient clarity on what to do with the complaint. A good process will also help you diffuse a complaint that is noise for the sake of noise.
This week I am looking at everyday management of the typical newsagency business – to open discussion among people here about what they do in the area of I cover and to help others to look at their own processes.
Footnote: a colleague mentioned to me yesterday that the our in the title is misleading as these posts could be about all newsagents. That’s what I meant. The our is not personal about my business but rather about all newsagencies.
In a week we sold seven Grumpy Cats – by having fun with the product in line with its representation in social media – on Twitter and Facebook. Notice the call to action signs our team made.
We have the Grumpy Cat at the counter and in our plush department.
We sell cat magazines, calendars and plush so why not the Grumpy Cat? Customers agree. 7 sold in a week!
The Grumpy Cat is from Jasnor. If you want to know more about this beast and the fortune it is making for its owner check here. It’s an example of leveraging a brand that appeals to a valuable shopper and connection with a social media phenomenon at the same time.
Did you get Photoshop for Photographers yesterday? We did – for the third time. And the stock we received looks like it has been around the country several times. It was dirty – not of merchantable quality. That’s why we early returned it. It looked like trash.
Shame on Network Services for letting this recycled old stock through.
Regardless of the poor quality of the stock we received I’d have early returned it anyway as we have had the title twice already. It’s an abuse of an unfair magazine distribution model that it’s send around for a third go.
Any publisher using Network and experiencing frustrating early returns should look at what happened here to understand why newsagents strike back at Network distributed titles.