A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Day four of five simple moves for increasing sales in your newsagency: use your counter!

dogscatsThis week I am running a series of simple moves you can make in your newsagency to increase sales. None requires you to spend any money, only time. Here is simple move to make more money by changing your use of your counter.

Take everything off your counter. Now, put something at the counter that you have never had there. Choose products that appeal to your customers. But make sure that your choice challenges your customers and you.

We did this a while back by placing $24.95 plush dogs and cats at the counter – replacing confectionery. Shock horror they sold very well. Amazingly well in fact. Before this experience I would have said that selling $24.94 dogs and cats at the counter would not work.

Your counter space should be part of your continuous improvement commitment. An approach of continuous movement is important on the newsagency shop floor.

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Management tip

Blocking the newsagency window

windowcoverThis is the main window of a high street newsagency that I saw recently. On the other side of the wall of magazine posters is a fixture with stock. There is room elsewhere on the shop floor for this fixture. Moving it, or trashing it, would free up the window and allow shoppers to see inside. Immediately on doing this a smart retailer would make the shop more appealing to shoppers walking by. This, in turn, should boost sales.

Removing magazine posters in the window of any newsagency is important if the business is to increase relevance to those walking past the business. The old-school approach shown in the photo does not serve the business well.

I appreciate it is easy to stand outside a shop and say what should be done. However, in this instance, moving the fixture could be done with a bit of effort and the positive impact for the business could be considerable.

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Newsagency management

Terrific issue of Vanity Fair to have

vanityfairWhile I don’t usually have Vanity Fair this latest issue would be one to stock given the extraordinary interest in the hit TV series Game of Thrones. This is an example of where being able to order a one off supply of an issue of a magazine title could help drive sales for us and the publisher. I noticed this issue in an airport location earlier this week.

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magazines

Day three of five simple moves for increasing sales in your newsagency: dance!

This week I am running a series of simple moves you can make in your newsagency to increase sales. None requires you to spend any money, only time. Here is simple move to make more money by creating a dance floor.

In front of your counter, a in a space walked past by more customers that almost any other part of your shop, set aside space that is your swing space, your dance floor.

This is space is your key promo space – where you pitch with your best creativity items you want all your shoppers to see.

On the dance floor you display to sell – with flair, excitement and engagement.

The key is creating the space. I have never been in a newsagency where a dance floor cannot be created.

An approach of continuous movement is important on the newsagency shop floor. A dance floor is key to this continuous movement.

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Newsagency management

Banning a Bauer merchandiser from visiting the newsagency

bauermerchandiserA Bauer merchandiser visited my newsagency yesterday and without discussion with the store manager or any staff and without permission moved a Pacific Magazine title to a sub-standard position and placed a Bauer title into a prime position. I have contacted Bauer with evidence of the move and asked that this merchandiser not visit the business again.

Is this action of moving Bauer titles to better locations than Pacific titles an instruction from Bauer?  If so, shame on them.  In my communication with Bauer about this yesterday they did not take the opportunity to advise that such a move against a competitor title without in-store permission was against company policy.

Our layout of magazines is specific and thought through. With our weekly magazines experiencing excellent well above average year on year growth we’re doing something right. How dare a Bauer representative mess with something that is working better than in an average newsagency.

This is my shop, I pay the rent. It disgusts me that a person representing Bauer does this without permission.

How can I be certain the Bauer representative did this? I have video evidence. I thought about posting it here – it’s damning.

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magazines

Promoting SPACES with frankie

frankiespacesWe are promoting the new SPACES next to sister publication frankie as it’s a title that will appeal to the frankie reader. We also have SPACES with our hoe and living titles – with the full cover on show. We follow the same dual location approach with Smith Journal and it’s the frankie placement that works best for us.

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magazines

Nothing like a school excursion

chocolateI used to love school excursions and fondly remember visiting the Newcastle steelworks and a Gippsland cheese factory in primary and high school respectively.

Today, I got to go on an excursion to the Chocolate Gems factory in Brisbane. While sure it was wonderful taste-testing, the real pleasure came from learning about the products, how they are made and how they are different to more mass-produced products.

Knowing how this chocolate is made compared to other products helps us better serve customers and better promote the Chocolate Gems product. There is nothing like getting valuable product knowledge direct from the factory floor of the manufacturer.

I recommend Chocolate gems to newsagents – their products are ideal for local store bagging or purchasing pre packaged as gifts. They are also good for singles sales at the counter.  The margin is double wham you get from Darrel Lea.  They ship in a smart way so that anywhere in Australia the product arrives fresh.

FYI the folks at Chocolate Gems have no idea I am writing this. They have not asked me to. I am mentioning it because what I saw today was a small business operator competing against some massive international businesses. It reminded me of newsagencies and our competitive situation. We need to support more small businesses.

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confectionary

Stunning window display for hair pomade

windowdisplayThis stunning window display in Brisbane promoting Uppercut Hair Pomade caught my eye this morning.

The goal of any visual merchandising has to be to get you to notice a product. This display worked. I noticed and stopped to look.

The symmetrical placement of the hair pomade product is more impactful and noticeable than a traditional hair products window where products are placed without any wow factor.

We have plenty of products in our newsagencies we can create similarly impactful window displays with.

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visual merchandising

Day two of five simple moves for increasing sales in your newsagency: get your adjacencies right

shopfloorplacementThis week I am running a series of simple moves you can make in your newsagency to increase sales. None requires you to spend any money, only time.

Here is simple move to make more money by getting product adjacencies right.

All it takes is some thinking about who your shopper is and watching how they shop your shop.

Most card purchases are a gift opportunity. So it stands to reason that you have gifts near cards. This is what we have – even though you can’t see the gift department in this photo.

Today’s tip is about what else card customers may purchase. Our reports show they purchase jewellery and premium collectible bears. So, we responded to their interest and moved both to be placed near cards in such a way that 75% of card shoppers will easily see them.

The result is a bump in sales – from a move that took a few minutes to consider and another few minutes to execute.

The key here is looking at your data and watching your customers – and responding to make it easier for them to do what they want.

Success with a product is often as much about placement as it is about the product itself. This is why an approach of continuous movement is important on the newsagency shop floor. Identifying key shopper traffic routs and leveraging these with tactical placement should help you increase your sales.

Click on the image for a larger version.

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Newsagency management

Fortean Times supports newsagents

forteanIt’s terrific seeing the publisher of Fortean Times use social media, in this instance Twitter, to promote newsagents as the retailer of their magazine. Their tweet reached out to their 14,900 followers. It’s endorsements like this of the newsagency channel, here and in the UK, that is important to us. Thanks Fortean Times!

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magazines

The bright book shop beckons tonight

brightbookshopI had to visit this bookshop tonight on Mary Street in Brisbane tonight. At 5:20pm the street was dark and this shop stood out. The brightness of the lighting says something about the business. It made me feel I was certain to find a good book there.

Call me crazy but I connected the brightness with optimism.

While there were other shops open on Mary Street, this was by far the best lit, the most visually enticing.

Any retailer on this end of Mary Street competing for a bookshop customer will have to lift their game if they want to compete. The newsagency across the road was open but the lights were dim. It didn’t have the feeling of optimism. This could be fixed with some shop floor changes and fresh lighting.

We compete in an ever changing world and while newsagents often worry about what they cannot change – like online, print disruption and the like – too often they ignore what they can change like in-store lighting.

I found a good book by the way – Prisoner X by Rafael Epstein.

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Book retailing

Courier Mail cover-up

couriermailtrashThe front page photo on The Courier Mail today is partly obscured by a house ad promoting a subscription offer. So much for the front page of the newspaper driving over the counter sales. To me, the ad gets in the way of the front page news story. It disappoints me to see editorial content treated in this way.

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newspaper masthead desecration

Day one of five simple moves for increasing sales in your newsagency: leveraging high traffic locations

exitingmagazinesThis week I am running a series of simple moves you can make in your newsagency to increase sales. None requires you to spend any money, only time.

Here is simple move to make more money from magazine customers.

Walk down your main magazine aisle and then walk from there to your counter – what do you pass along the way? What is promoted to shoppers walking this path? Do you disrupt shoppers as they walk this and other high-traffic routes in your newsagency?

Click on the photo and notice the card fixture we have placed facing shoppers as they exit the main magazine aisle. I have seen customers notice it when exiting the magazine aisle.

We have had this card unit in this location for couple of weeks. This is about as long as we like to have something here. Change is important – especially at the exit fro the magazine aisle as this is a path many regulars take and they become store blind.

Success with a product is often as much about placement as it is about the product itself. This is why an approach of continuous movement is important on the newsagency shop floor. Identifying key shopper traffic routs and leveraging these with tactical placement should help you increase your sales.

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Greeting Cards

Bauer Media increases Yours supply without justification

magsyoursincreaseOur supply of Yours was increased by close to 20% by the Bauer Media allocations team without any justification in our sales data. With a consistent (except for one issue) sell-through of between 40% and 50% there is no reason for any increase in supply.

This is gross oversupply by Bauer.

I’d love to know if other newsagents have experienced a similar increase in supply of Yours without justification.

Yours is loss making for us on the current numbers. sales are not covering the retail real-estate and labour involved in carrying the title. the extent of the loss is extended by what to me looks like a broken supply model.

Bauer owned Network Services raves about its Sales Based Replenishment facilities. With Yours being a fortnightly title there are several options for top-up through the on-sale.

A fairer model would be skinnier supply and top up based on sales data. This makes the publisher and distributor more accountable rather than the apparent current model of using the small business newsagent as the warehouse and the back.

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magazine distribution

With Peppa Pig in the news…

peppaabcnewsWe have had our Peppa Pig spinner and products in prime position this past week with Peppa Pig so much in the news following a report that the show may be axed as a result of budget cuts.

While the report of possible axing was soon shut down, the brand got plenty of media coverage so it made sense to me that we exploited this with a refresh of our offer. We did resist the temptation to put up a sign – get your Peppa Pig stocks while they last.

In addition to the plush we have small suitcases, play sets, stationery sets and other items. We’re competing with the majors as well as the ABC Shop – and doing okay.

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newsagency marketing

Win a Tablet promotion kicks off

tabletThe Pacific Magazines Win! a Tablet promotion kicks off today with excellent consumer collateral as well as excellent collateral to newsagents promoting the opportunities for their businesses. This is a well thought out low-tech promotion assigned to drive loyalty to Pacific Magazines titles and to participating newsagencies. I like the point of difference it provides us with.

Harvesting shopper contact details sits at the core of this promotion. Newsagents actively using the Pacific Magazines Nexus marketing program will know the value of a good shopper database for out of tore marketing.

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magazines

Sunday newsagency marketing tip: get out there and promote

marketingsignThere was a time when newsagents could put products on the shelves or the shop floor and it would sell thanks to the traffic for newspapers, lottery products, transport tickets and magazines. Now, with all these important traffic generating categories available elsewhere, traffic for most newsagency businesses is down year on year and too often nothing is being done to source net new traffic.

Take Loom Bands. If you had them in your newsagency what did you do to promote them outside your business? If you did nothing then you did not maximise the opportunity. If you promoted on your front window to passers-by kudos to you. If you created a flyer and handed this to customers, well done. If you promoted through a letterbox drop, using social media or in the local newspaper, fantastic! Newsagents who did this would have had more success with Loom Bands.

Now more than ever in our history newsagents need to engage in out of store marketing if we are to make the most of opportunities and attract business-essential new traffic. Such marketing does not need to be expensive. Indeed, anything is going to be better than the nothing being done by some.

We are each responsible for the traffic coming through our doors, no one else.

When we got Loom Brand is we promoted availability with posters facing into the mall. Being in a shopping centre this works well for us. We also positioned the product in a high traffic impulse purchase location. it worked. We sold through, ordered more, sold through and now have minimal stock.

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marketing

Sunday newsagency management tip: check-in daily

Open regular communication is important to getting the most from everyone working in your newsagency. I rely on a communication book for noting tasks to be done and sharing information. This is supplemented by a noticeboard in the back room – if the business has a back room.

It’s a daily (or otherwise regular) check in on the phone that I find of the most use. An agenda free catch up with the manager or senior person in-store can provide insights that feed into key management decisions. Comments made in passing, not thought important by one person, can turn out to be invaluable in guiding decisions.

In addition to finding out what’s been happening in the business, the daily check in also lets your key people know that the business is important to you and that you value their input. This can be encouraging.

If you don’t work in your newsagency every day, my suggestion is a daily check in call – at around the same time each day. Not to check up, but to check in.

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Management tip

A different location for AWW has paid off

awwolderlocWe placed the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly between magazines for women 60+ and fashion and it’s been selling well. Our usual location, between weeklies and food titles, continues to work well. Our usual secondary location for AWW is with newspapers but this new secondary position is performing better.

For big selling titles it’s a race to grab customers before they see it elsewhere. This is why multiple locations is important in the first week of there on-sale.

Newsagents growing magazine sales are more likely to be those engaged in this additional activity.

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magazines

Who’d be a magazine distributor?

Source Interlink, one of the biggest magazine distributors in the US announced Friday that it will soon end “substantially all” of its business operations, putting 6,000 out of work. The Wall Street Journal report documents some challenges for the category:

Companies such as Source Interlink play a major role in the magazine business, arranging for printed magazines to be distributed to retailers large and small. It has become a more difficult part of the business in recent years, as consumers increasingly use the Web to read digital content, including magazines. That shift has upended the economics of newsstand distribution.

While this story has no direct Australian connection, the challenges and economics are not dissimilar.

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magazine distribution

Newsagents need to do better with pens & markers if we want more stationery business

officewpensPens and markers account for 33% or more of all stationery sold in a typical newsagency yet we do little to support such a hero category. Newsagents usually leave pens placed on a wall, in a permanent fixture, often away from the main traffic thoroughfare – almost like they are not important when in fact they are vital to the health of our stationery department.

We need to do better than this. The solid contribution pens and markers make is an excellent base off of which to drive growth. But it takes a commitment of space, time and inventory investment.

The photo shows what confronts shoppers at the entrance to an Officeworks store I visited this week. There is no mistaking their commitment to pens.

While we complain (me included) about Officeworks and their ethically questionable price based advertising, on their shop floor they pitch everyday stationery like pens and markets well.

We need to do better if we are to convince shoppers that we are destination shops in this category.

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Newsagency management

Cool Coles trolly impulse line

colestrolleyAt the entrance to a Coles supermarket yesterday I noticed a line of dump bins with $15 shopping trolleys. This is smart buying and placement by Coles. I’m sure they will sell out in no time – they would have done their homework.

Any retail business with excellent traffic like supermarkets and newsagencies – needs to actively pursue impulse purchase lines that leverage traffic opportunities beyond destination purchases.

I’m positing this photo of what I saw at Coles as inspiration.

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retail
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