UK food TV star Mary Berry is on the cover of Woman’s Weekly Healthy Living, My Weekly and Cook Vegetarian right now – giving us an excellent opportunity to place all titles next to each other. You don’t need to know who she is – just recognise her face on the covers and encourage shoppers interested in Mary to purchase all three titles. A simple move could get you some extra sales.

We are featuring the latest issue of Women’s Health magazine with this placement above other titles that appeal to the same shopper. The Women’s Health placement has been done to achieve impulse purchases of this title by shoppers purchasing the magazines below it – in their usual location. We often sell more copies of Women’s Health outside the health section of the magazine department.

Further to my post yesterday commenting on the January – March magazine audit result, I checked my numbers for May so far – weekly magazine unit sales are up 11% for the first 16 days of May compared to the same period a year earlier. Click on the image and see the data for yourself. I’m posting it here to encourage other newsagents to chase growth. I’m achieving this with no additional promotion except for a consistent customer service loyalty offering.

Newsagents can grow magazine sales.

The best place for the Better Basics Your best-ever Chicken Cookbook is with newspapers this weekend. It;s an ideal weekend shopper title. We have it in this locations as week as with food and a pocket with weeklies. Good sales so far.

Newsagents should take a look at the opportunity of Spaces magazine issue #2 . Spaces is from the people behind frankie magazine. It’s a title you will need to order from Gotch if you’re not down for any.  The on-sale is June 2, 2014.  The note from the publisher explains: This unique collection of homes and creative space celebrates the importance of home to a creative bunch of Australians. Whilst not fancy, these homes and ‘Spaces’ encapsulate what is precious to Australians and our home environs!

In a Coles supermarket last at first I wondered if they were promoting Cosmopolitan with Pearl Barley. I soon realised they were a victim of a customer dumping a product far away from where it should be.

This poor behaviour by customers costs all retailers and probably some sales. But there is no stopping it. In fact, it probably helps in that we get on the shop floor putting things back where they should be and soon realise other opportunities.

Occasionally, where a customer dumps something they don’t want shows a placement opportunity previously overlooked. It’s very cool when this happens.

Let us know what you think about customers dumping products out of place like this.

The free Lindt chocolate bagged with the latest issue of Woman’s Day is a nice gift I am sure will drive sales for the title. While delicious has this gift once a year I cannot recall seeing Lindt with weeklies before.