The gift with purchase with the latest issue of Mother & Baby magazine makes this a good issue to promote in a way that the full cover is on show – so the gift can be seen. We are using the opportunity to promote the title off-location – to get it in front of people not looking for the title.
The announcement today that Woolworths intends to offer free heath checks is another example of why we need legislation to stop the growth of the supermarket duopoly in Australia. Indeed, politicians need to legislate to force a reduction of their market share.
Bob Katter was on TV tonight listing the businesses closed brown by the supermarkets. He included newsagents in his list. While I Tweeted Bob (@RealBobKatter) to say we’re not dead yet, newsagents and every other small business owner in Australia needs to lobby their local politicians to call for legislation reining in Coles and Woolworths.
Enough is enough. We have to fight for our businesses, our families, our employees and ur communities.
Chocolate gems is a Brisbane based chocolate making business. Their products ware delicious. Better still, they are locally made. Newsagents wanting to pitch local chocolate should consider styocking Chocolate Gems products. They can sell in bulk or in boxes – let them know your needs. You’ll find them easy to deal with. Selling Chocolage gems gives you an opportunity to promote that you;re supporting local Australian businesses.
Chocolate gems is a preferred supplier to nextra and newsXpress. They will supply any newsagent.
This week I am drawing attention to several local suppliers newsagents could consider. Stocking products from these and similarly local suppliers adds credibility to our shop local pitch. To me, local products are products made and / or designed in Australia. If my newsagency was in a country area my focus would be more on products sourced even closer to home.
Filled with sad and frustrating stories and chronicling extraordinary mismanagement of a once-great company, STOP THE PRESSES! How greed, incompetence (and the internet) wrecked Fairfax by Ben Hill is an excellent book. It takes us through the history of the company, the impact of the internet and extraordinary mismanagement from the top down.
STOP THE PRESSES! also looks at what’s next. The Billionaires’ Playthings chapter is a must-read fort anyone interested in democracy in Australia and in the future of good journalism in Australia.
This is an excellent book. I highly recommend it.
Reading STOP THE PRESSES! I found myself recalling my own experiences dealing with Fairfax. Through my software company I have been involved with people at Fairfax for over thirty years. In the first ten years Fairfax people were arrogant yet clear in decision making and action. In the next decade they appeared scared. In the last ten years then have looked incompetent.
I sold my distribution business six years ago. In the years since, as a retail only newsagent, Fairfax has done nothing to increase single copy sales. This is frustrating as it has ignored a unique retail network run by people who did want Fairfax to succeed.
I have been particularly interested in their approach on cover price. As the relevance and quality of the print product has declined they have increased the price they charge for it. Nuts!
On specific Fairfax products themselves. In my own home town, The Age is a small shadow of itself. Each day it is running old news, news I’ve read online or on my phone already. The people putting the newspaper together have not come to grips with the need to publish in print different content to what we can access online, they are not embracing the print medium in a compelling way.
Fairfax was the first publisher in Australia to sell space in page one of its newspapers with the stuck on ads that I often complain about. Their preparedness to see an ad that covers their own brand or headlines for page one stories was evidence, years ago, of them giving up on their brand and giving up on news.
Note: I was sent a review copy by the publisher.
The preview copy of Good Chef bad Chef 3 that I received last week is very popular in the office. Sales of issues 1 and 2 suggest that issue 3 will be very popular on the newsagency shop floor. On sale next Monday, I’d urge newsagents to promote the title heavily and reorder early as this title will sell all through the on-sale. I know of some who early returned there last issue only to order more to keep up with customer demand. Don’t early return this title as the accompanying TV show will drive excellent interest.
Inside Good Chef bad Chef 3 you will find some delicious recipes. I love the look of the Beef and Guinness Casserole and the Wile Mushroom Gratin and the Kentish Cherry Butter Pudding.
The Jack Brabham photo on the cover of F1 Racing respects a hero to Australian Formula 1 racing fans. We are respecting the cover with placement such that the full cover can be seen. This is an issue more will buy – beyond the regular purchasers of this title. Take a look at your placement of the title.
I don’t like these discounted bagged magazines from Bauer: they waste space in already crowded magazine shelves. This latest offer is promoting NW magazine with the current OK! – an offer that does not make sense to me. We have no space so have relegated the offer to a rear pocket.
On the side of this blog is a list of categories under which I file posts. Marketing and management advice remain the most often searched content. Click here for access to free newsagency marketing tips. Click here for access to free newsagency management tips.
If we are to promote a shop local pitch to our local communities we need to source locally made and locally connected products. This week I will draw attention to several local suppliers newsagents could consider. Stocking products from these and similarly local suppliers adds credibility to our shop local pitch. To me, local products are products made and / or designed in Australia. If my newsagency was in a country area my focus would be more on products sourced even closer to home.
Just Kiddin is a Melbourne based company run by a talented designer who sells her own designs in the form of tents and other products for kids. Their tents are terrific: easy to display (hang them from the ceiling), well packaged and of high quality. While major retailers have cheaper products, the Just Kiddin tents are seen by shoppers as far superior. In one of my newsagencies we have sold more than 60 tents in the last year – that’s close to $6,000 worth. They are a good fit with newsagents who sell toys, cards for kids and kids magazines – yep, just about anyone.
I first found the products at the Home and Giving Fair in Melbourne. The business owner and product designer was on the stand offering excellent insights into the products.
Just Kiddin has been a newsXpress preferred supplier for quite some time. They will sell to others.
Our address book sales are up from $61.95 for the first three weeks of June 2013 to $340.22 in the first three weeks of June 2014. This 449% increase in address book revenue has been driven by a small in-store promotion of our address book range – proving the value of promoting smaller profit offerings from the stationery department.
The promoting cost us little in the way of time and space yet the return was excellent. Our main focus was to let shoppers know we had a range. There was no big aisle-end display. There was also no special price offer.
Newsagents can increase stationery sales by focussing on pitching sought-after products in a way that encourages convenience shopping.
Small format kids magazines like K-Zone, D-Mag and Total Girl need to be displays with the fill magazine on show. This is especially true at school holidays time when we have more kids in our newsagencies. The gifts bagged with the magazines are more easily seen if the titles are on full cover display and not placed in the usual magazine fixtures in many newsagencies.
I urge newsagents to check today how they have these kids titles displayed.
I saw this mini Cleo placed with the fill-size edition in a Coles this morning. Any newsagents received it? I didn’t – but not sure if I’d want it.
School holidays present an excellent opportunity for all retailers including newsagents. They bring out shoppers we might not often see and shoppers who are usually open to purchasing items they might not consider outside school holiday times.
School holidays present us with excellent commercial opportunities regardless of our newsagency location and situation.
Here are my suggestions for engaging with this recurring season:
School holidays are not about dealing with more kids or being a child minding centre while parents browse magazines or even shop elsewhere. They are an opportunity to increase sales – by being proactive with the season.
Every day I hear stories from newsagents about them being told what to do in their business by people outside their business. They are usually being told to do something they do not agree with, do not want to do or will not improve the financial return they achieve from their business.
Landlords, suppliers, advisors and employees often tell newsagents what to do in their businesses.
Historically, newsagents have been servants to publishers, as agents. Publishers were often brutal in enforcing their rules and demands. That continued as agents for lottery organisations (in most states but not all) with some representatives being brutal today in pushing newsagents to do what they want. In the magazine space, too, there are some supplier representatives who demand things of newsagents without a thought for the commercial value for newsagents.
It’s 2014 people.
Unless you have a contract that explicitly stipulates that you must do what supplier X demands, only accede to their demands if you agree and if you think it will put your business in a better petition.
Own your decisions.
There is no value in doing something you don’t agree with only because you are pressured. There is no commercial benefit from doing something, it failing and you complaining about it later.
It’s your business and your money at risk.
Thankfully, we are getting more stock of the Better Homes and Gardens branded Your Knitting & Crochet Collection Monday as we sold out Saturday. A couple walking past the newsagency on their away out of the centre noticed the poster and went in and picked up a copy. I saw this happen myself … it was another reminder of the value of a good poster out the front of the newsagency for an in-demand product driving a purchase. The customer left with an offer to entice them back.
There was a time when newspapers valued their mastheads. Not any more apparently. They prefer to cover them with ads that end up as litter when readers rip them off while walking out of the shop. Shame on those responsible at The Weekend Australian.
The Bauer requirement to prove a minimum sales volume in order to get a direct account does not appear to apply to all with one new account reportedly being approved by Bauer in a town already served with plenty of newsagents and in a small centre that has a challenged retail business track record. The history of the centre alone would highlight reasons for caution.
Check out the photo of a sign in front of a local butcher a friend posted on Facebook yesterday. I love the direct and feisty words of this butcher who is making a plea for locals to support their small business and not the big supermarket.
With tougher competition from the supermarket dopily newsagents could engage in a campaign like this – educating shoppers about how Coles and Woolworths are taking business from us and highlighting what shoppers could miss if they ultimately win and see more small business newsagents and other local businesses closed.
We can’t stand by and do nothing. Like this butcher, we need to educate our customers with passion.
The issue of Australian Women’s Weekly on display in my local Coles supermarket is the old issue. other they did not get their stock or they have not yet put out the new issue. Either way it presents an opportunity for the nearby newsagent. If it was me I’d be happy about this. Wins like this are rare.
The It Girl Loom band magazine is months too late to connect with the rapidly fading Loom band craze. Many of us were in this space last year and are now out with the market more than saturated. Also, we were making 50% and 69% GP and not the 25% we get on magazines. I suspect this magazine will be early returned.
Our supply of Retsored Cars Australia was increased without any justification in the sales data. While I like this Aussie magazine and want to support them, the publisher needs to ensure newsagents do not face an increase in supply without any justification in the sales data. Ugh!
The Herald Sun today has an ad stuck on the photo of a page one story. Newsagents: never let a newspaper publisher representative tell you where to put your papers or where to place the posters given their own disregard for their own product. Shame on them treating editorial content in this way.
News Corp’s Inside Out magazine is on sale at Coles for $6.00, $2.20 less than the price in newsagencies and other retail outlets.
How is it that this News Corp. title can be sold to shoppers at Coles for less than newsagents pay for it?
Why would newsagents not early return all Inside Out stock right away in protest at this deal?
One of my newsagencies is directly in front of Coles. This deal makes us look expensive. It plays into the Coles advertising that they are driving prices down.
I’d love to know if there is a deeper deal between News Corp. and Coles that could see other deals that make newsagencies look expensive to what Coles offers.
Once you consider this Inside Out deal and last week’s Woman’s Day deal, supermarkets certainly have newsagents in their sights and some suppliers appear willing to play with them. We need to remind these suppliers that we are a strong national channel.
Other newsagent suppliers note: resist pressure from Coles to join them on the race to lower margin business. The more shoppers you turn away from newsagents the more you rely on the likes of Coles and think for a moment what that world looks like to you.
Note: I moved this post from yesterday to today to keep the issue in the spotlight.
We have moved The Age down from our main newspaper shelf on weekdays given the low sales volume. Sales are not paying for the space.
We have filled the space with popular magazine titles that we think will interest newspaper shoppers. The magazine mix will change over time based on what we think will work best from here. It’s all about return on shelf space.
On Saturdays The Age will be back on the top shelf due to higher sales and the physical size of the issue.
From time to time we will give The Age time in the sun just as we support any lower volume title.
The impact of the moving cover shot on The Australian Women’s Weekly featuring ultra marathon runner Turia Pitt is diluted with the placement of a free Chocolate cookbook covering almost half the cover.
The stuck on chocolate cookbook plus the Priceline catalogue on the back page make this a messy issue to display when customers browse the magazine and shove it back into the shelves, damaging the stuck-on attachments.