We have placed a line of Valentine’s Day themed plush in with our car magazines to pitch the season to guys who are blind to the season to the last minute. By the time guys get to our car magazines they will have passed three displays of these cute things. We’re chasing a sales record of a single plush item and we’re hoping our car magazine shoppers will help us achieve that. Retail can be fun.
The Herald Sun Mr Men promotion kicked off yesterday and if what I’ve seen played out across the state they are in for a good sales boost. All week Melbourne TV has been running ads so demand was strong from the outset. People came in asking for the free book and that’s a good start – the rest is up to us.
Newsagents often cite superior customer service as a point of difference they offer over other retailers selling magazines, stationery and greeting cards. This newsagency marketing idea challenges newsagents to take the customer service experience to a new level and to have fun at the same time.
Setup a small desk near the entrance to your newsagency on the busiest day of the week. Fit out the desk with a visitor chair, a phone (it does not have to work), blotter (if you can get it), pens, a couple of trays – make it look like something from the 1960s. Try and find a bell for people to ring too. Make a name plate: CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Next, dress the part of an old-style office manager. Sit behind the desk, smiling at people as they come and go.
Hopefully, something happens. Hopefully, customers enjoy the fun of the set and hopefully you get questions and engage in discussions that lead to business opportunities.
You could put a money box on the desk and ask for a gold coin donation for a local charity for every bit of advice you give – and you could take questions not directly related to the business. This could be one way to broaden the focus of what you are trying to do.
The core goal of the idea is to show current and prospective customers that you care about customer service. Along the way you can show them you can have fun. The gold could be opportunities you uncover as a result.
If you really immerse yourself in this idea talk to the local paper and use your business Facebook page to promote it.
This is your opportunity to change how people see your business in terms of customer service.
It’s easy in small business to lose touch with the world outside your business, to lose touch with the world your customers live in. It could be that the world as you know it has changed in ways you are not familiar with.
Take a day, yes I know that is harder than it sounds, but take a day and hunt down where people living in the area served by your newsagency could purchase any of the top twenty products or services you sell.
Search online for the items – from your home computer and using your mobile phone when out on the street near your shop. Where are people looking on-line and on-mobile being sent when searching for these top selling items on which you rely? Go have a look at those businesses. Look at them in the context of what you offer, look for points of difference.
There will be some businesses competing with you, through the search engines, that are not located near you. Consider these carefully as part of this exercise. Too often newsagents discount them – you’d only do that at your peril.
The goals here are for you to discover competitor businesses that may not have been on your radar and to learn more about how they specifically compete with your business. The insights gained could inform your business plans. They could lead to immediate changes in your business.
Consumer habits have changed significantly in recent years and smart retailers are embracing these changes. My experience is that independent small retailers are not keeping up with the changes because they are ignorant of how some people, people who may have shopped with them in the past, now shop.
So, take a day and try and compete with your business.
One mum commented last week that she liked our healthy options at the counter – more products like the fun high bounce balls and other fun things for kids and less of sugar charged candy. In addition to these being healthy options for kids and parents they are healthier for us too – generating good high-margin purchases … adding to the basket.
We have one copy of Yen magazine left. The cover featuring Lorde has been a hit as I expected. We have been supporting Rolling Store with placement next to Yen. We can grow magazine sales if we take notice of cover stories and engage beyond our own interests.
A successful newsagent with a growing business told me yesterday that a magazine publisher representative visiting their business was unhappy with the shop and said they would have to report them. The representative said the newsagency looked too much like a gift shop.
This is in a business achieving double-digit year on year growth, a business worth more today than a year ago as a result of lifting gross profit. A business worth more to this publisher than it was worth a year ago. Yet the publisher representative treats the good retailer like a naughty school kid.
No magazine publisher or distributor has the right to complain about how a successful newsagency looks, they gave up thst right when they supported deregulation fifteen years ago.
Have you been told you will reported? If so, please share your story here and out overbearing behaviour.
Slam Skateboarding magazine is using Twitter (1,671 followers) and Facebook (49,531 page likes) to tell people the latest issue of the magazine is out at your local newsagents. They specifically tell people to shop with us. Here is a very cool niche magazine supporting our niche businesses.
This is a reason for us to do something special with and for this title – to leverage and support it the way it is leveraging and supporting us.
How are you supporting Slam Skateboarding?
Sugar is a hot topic in the news and on current affairs programs and we’re tapping into that by ensuring the full cover of the latest issue of New Scientist magazine is on show. Placement in usual magazine fixturing could miss an impulse purchase opportunity. A bit of extra attention can grow magazine sales.
We’re promoting the AFL season launch issue of the AFL Record with this placement shown in the photo on a floor display unit placed at the entrance to our main magazine aisle. It’s also located with sports titles and featuring in our men’s magazine section.
I caught some of the Better Homes and Gardens TV show last night and was reminded of the importance of the show in driving magazine sales. The magazine featured and newsagents were promoted. We have BHG with weeklies, in the usual location as well as with newspapers.
How do we grow magazine sales – by engaging with titles.
The October – December 2013 newsagency sales benchmark study is the first in years to report more newsagents achieving growth in magazine sales than declining. This is great news. Digging deeper into the data I think the growth is in part due to engagement with magazines and in part due to these businesses attracting shoppers for a strong gift or card or plus (or a mix of all) offering.
Whereas in the past newsagencies have attracted shoppers for magazines, newspapers, lotteries and cards, newsagencies today that attract shoppers for gifts, plush and cards first are more likely to achieve a deeper and more valuable basket and this different shopper engagement flows on especially to magazines.
In this newsagency sales benchmark study more than any in recent years I can see more newsagents changing their businesses, pursuing new opportunities and achieving measurable results.
Here are the results of the benchmark study:
Customer traffic. 59% of newsagents recorded an average decline of 2.9% in transactions. 11% reported no change and the rest an average growth of 3.8%.
Overall newsagency sales decline. 61% reported an average revenue decline of 8%. Of those reporting growth, the average was 7.2%.
Basket depth. 54% reported a decrease in basket size (items in the basket) with an average decrease was 1.9%. 8% showed no change. The rest achieved 2.3% growth.
Basket value. 32% of newsagents reported an average increase in basket value of 2.6%.
Discounting. 14% of respondents engaged in significant discounting.
The gap between growing and contracting newsagencies is bigger than ever. This presents an extraordinary problem for the channel as growth and decline separate newsagents and their businesses from each other.
Benchmark results by key departments:
57% of newsagents reported average growth of 3.9%. Of those reporting a decline, the average was 5.3% – in line with a growing gap between growth and decline. Everyday counter cards were strong through this quarter with some newsagencies reporting double-digit growth.
It is clear from the data in this study that successful newsagencies are changing more rapidly than the not so successful newsagencies and that the changes themselves are significant. It is a thrill to see newsagents chasing more traffic, better overall GP and deeper baskets.
Newsagencies continue to be good businesses to own. They respond to attention. More than any benchmark study in the last three years, this study supports this belief. That so many newsagents are reporting growth is magazines sales is a testament to the active engagement of those newsagents and their employees in this traffic-critical category.
The best type of newsagency to own is the one where you have the most control over what you sell and where you generate traffic for several product categories where average gross profit is 50% or higher.
The most important advice I have for newsagents is: Run your business today as if today is your pay day. Too many newsagents continue to run their businesses as if their pay day is when they sell. This will not happen.
Newsagents: look at your business, your sources of traffic, your average GP. Your success will come from many small steps.
Suppliers: Get smart in your engagement with newsagents. Trust them. Treat them with respect. Share their mission to grow traffic and GP and basket value. Give newsagents complete control over what they sell of your products.
We received twenty-eight copies of the launch issues of Yours magazine from Bauer Media yesterday – double what I would have expected to receive based on sales of other magazines appealing to the target reader. We received more copies than People’s Friend, an established title for us that is skewed at women just slightly older than the Yours target.
I wish publishers would start a title slow and build rather than using us as their bank and warehouse by giving us more stock than necessary. This new title has a two-week on-sale. Bauer could have used their sales based replenishment to top-up supply instead of front-loading. Despite this, we are supporting Yours with full cover display placement in two locations – with our weeklies and this location in the photo next to People’s Friend, next our our UK weeklies.
I spent half an hour reading Yours last night, cover to cover. Seriously. It feels true to its target reader except for the fashion and beauty pages – they felt very advertiser heavy and out of place – but I am not the customer.
Comparing it to the cheap and cheerful UK weeklies chasing the same reader, the Aussie Yours feels right at home. The difference here is that we don’t have a section of titles except for the imported UK titles. Yours feels more like them than an Aussie title. It being placed with the UK titles may not help it find the Aussie customer. I wonder if Yours would be more successful over time if it was not the only Australian magazine in this space. I think for these reasons it is important we promote it with our regular weeklies as well as UK titles – to get both shoppers.
It’s way to early to look at sales data. We plan to support the title for two months, your issues, and then asses our space commitment.
The Who cover featuring Phillip Seymour Hoffman is getting full cover treatment in two locations in-store from us – to promote the title to people who might not normally purchase it. Who does stories like this well and even for the shot time available the coverage is satisfying for a fan in my view.
Here is our aisle-end promotion for the Pacific Magazines $10,000 competition. It’s satisfying seeing customers notice the display, stop, and pick up a title. While I am not a fan of billboard displays in-store, this one works because of terrific collateral supporting a simple pitch.
There have been rumours circulating for some time about the structure of the Hubbed business being promoted to newsagents by the ANF. I have not written about them here as I waited to see if the situation would clarify. It is taking longer than expected.
A lack of disclosure is leaving newsagents considering Hubbed vulnerable.
At the heart of the situation as I understand it is the ownership of Hubbed. It could be that some of the key people newsagents ultimately deal with at Hubbed are different to those they thought were behind Hubbed.
Since the rumours started circulating here has been plenty of miscommunication about the issues. The ANF has been a party to this, as they have been with Hubbed all along. They have invested considerably in Hubbed and have, indeed, tied their success as an association to the success of Hubbed.
Newsagent uptake of Hubbed has not been what the business expected. Their roll out is not where they needed it to be. If they don’t get the numbers they need the model does not work. if it does not work and ultimately closes, newsagents could be left with financial lease agreements for equipment they took on specifically for Hubbed – like what happened with Bill Express.
Anyone facing signing a Hubbed contract should undertake thorough due diligence including getting documented clarity from a Director of the company as it where it is at right now in relation to their business plan projections.
Given what the ANF knows and given their active promotion of Hubbed, they owe newsagents a statement. Anyone signing with Hubbed based on the current ANF pitch is doing so without all the information the ANF could / should share.
Retail is changing in many ways and quickly. With space costing more, landlords and retailers are looking for new models to through which to drive value. We are seeing more smaller shops open than ever before.
Years ago there was a trend for large newsagencies – 300, 400, 500 square metres with coffee shops and other stores within the store. Now the trend in shopping malls is for newsagencies to be close to 100 square metres.
On Tuesday I saw one of the smallest shops ever, a ‘cafe’ in Auckland. Click on the photo to see how big / small the My Kitchen business is. It’s as wide as a doorway. They serve meals from a space that is smaller than a kitchen.
My Kitchen is one of many similar-sized stores I saw in Auckland, reflecting a trend I’ve not yet seen on this scale in Australian capital cities and shopping malls. It’s similar to some malls I have seen in China but there retail is quite different. What I saw in Auckland was these tiny shops mixed in with larger businesses – where a larger size space has been slices into a number of these micro spaces.
These trends are interesting but we need to be cautious as retail rends are like fashion – they take on quickly and fade even faster. The key for being a trend retailer is getting out ahead of the fall. That said, this apparent trend to micro tenancies could be here for a while if it means landlords can improve their return per square metre.
I’m not sure I can see a newsagency in a space of three square metres (or less) but I could see part of a newsagency.
I love this stand-alone display promoting water that I saw at Melbourne airport. Click on the image as see the detail as it’s the detail that makes the display special. See the windmill at the top of the display, on tip of the tank. In a busy retail space, it’s this detail that gets the display noticed.
Inspiring visual merchandising.
Here’s how the team at one of my newsagencies is promoting the Pacific Magazines $10,000 competition opportunity. I love this display: it’s bold and strong on brands.
This display is at the front of the main magazine aisle. We have stock of each title in their usual location.
This simple cash prize promotion is easy for customers to understand and the collateral from Pacific plays into that.
Here’s the ad promoting the $10,000 competition connected with New Idea, That’s Life and Better Homes and Gardens.
Nice.
There is a strong rumour that Fairfax will cut the weekend edition of The Australian Financial Review in the next few weeks. It would not surprise me. Just at it would not surprise me to hear of other daily newspapers cutting print days.
2014 will be a disruptive year for some newsagency suppliers. I expect we will see some long-term suppliers close or consolidate and some more recent suppliers withdraw from our channel or close altogether.
Just as suppliers do due-diligence on new accounts they open with newsagents, newsagents should do due diligence on suppliers – especially suppliers of products into which you need to invest capital, space and labour to launch in your newsagency.
It can be disrupting to a retail business if we stock a line of products or a service, investing in launching this to our customers – only to find it ceases to be available because of the closure of a supplier or the takeover of their business by a company that does not want to serve through our channel.
While I am not writing this post with a specific story of closure or merger in mind, I am aware of rumours of several businesses in play. As with any purchase you make – a deal that appears to be too good to be true is probably the deal to be most wary of.
Critical mass is what matters to newsagents and to suppliers of newsagents. If we’re smart, there is strength in numbers.
In downtown Auckland at 8:30pm last night I tried to purchase a couple of instant scratch tickets from one of the many c-stores with big lottery branding on the street front. I thought the sales guy was joking when he said that it was after 7pm. It turns out that they can’t sell any lottery products after 7pm. These twenty-four hour a day businesses can’t sell a key traffic driving product for key trading hours they are open. Odd.
The photo shows a prime location display of Lovatts puzzle titles on show yesterday at one of the WH Smith shops at Melbourne airport. Facing into the international terminal, it’s a strong pitch for Lovatts.
WH Smith purchased Wild Cards and Gifts as I mentioned on Monday. Newsagency style retail is their bread and butter. They are brand focused in their stores – as this Lovatts display shows.
I urge newsagents to ensure the full cover of the latest issue of Feast magazine is on show. It stands out against the sea of colour in the magazine aisle. We co-loate Feast for the first couple of weeks – usually with weekly magazines or at the sales counter, to leverage the regular ads on SBS.