We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health and the Men’s Health Summer Training Guide in prime position in our sports section. Both titles will feature in our RECOMMENDED MAGAZINES FOR CHRISTMAS GIFTS display from next week. Sales history shows Men’s Health sales are terrific in December and I think this is because it’s a good Christmas gift in many situations.
It’s through seasonal features, like magazines a gifts, where we can grow our magazine sales.
Both That’s Life and Take 5 offer excellent value this week that should drive impulse purchases. These are issues to get in prominent positions.
The Take 5 card Christmas card kit is a nice gift with purchase. Make sure customers can see the whole front cover. This is a good issue to feature at the counter. It’s also one to mention to appropriate shoppers when they are browsing magazines.
The That’s Life free cash opportunity will be popular – it always is when offered with the magazine. This, too, is a magazine to have in a prime second location like the counter. The REAL CASH pitch on the cover is the key – make sure it’s seen.
Both these titles have had a touch time in recent sales audits. The publishers are investing in making them more appealing. We need to equally invest to drive impulse purchases.
Charles warner has written an excellent piece for Forbes about Google. In Why Google Sells More Than Newspapers, Magazines, Warner simply explains why Google is winning the revenue race and speculates that print media will never win back its crown.
While print media companies want to retain newsagent attention, the indicators around us that encourage us to attract shoppers for non print media and other old-newsagent products grow in number.
More newsagents need to pay attention to this. While change is not occurring overnight it is occurring. We need to change as a result.
Last weekend a customers spent up big, really big, and received a $30.51 discount voucher. Her response: I like this, I could be dead tomorrow. That’s what she said. She added: I could be, I’m ninety next year. She was a hoot!
We talked a bit more. She was serious about the value to her of the voucher versus points. She said that when you get to her age your horizon is closer and you think about the short term more. The points don’t work she said because of the long time often involved.
I’m confident this customer will be back in the next week to spend the voucher. If she is true to her word she will be bringing a friend.
The experience had me reflecting on shopper engagement with the vouchers. There is no doubt that older customers particular like them. Maybe my 89 year old customer is not alone in focussing on the closer horizon.
I loved that she explained her fatigue with the points based loyalty programs. She’s the type of shopper I’m targeting with these vouchers.
Every day we see examples of the vouchers driving loyalty and helping us to continue to achieve valuable year on year growth.
I’ve seen evidence this week of employee fraud against a retailer where the EFTPOS terminal is not connected to the POS software used by the business. The employee recorded the sale in one was on the software and differently through the EFTPOS terminal. Poor back office management of the business meant that the behaviour went un-checked for some time.
I encourage newsagents using EFTPOS to only use it in an integrated way. You cut keystrokes, streamline sales processing and reduce the opportunity for employee fraud.
Some major retailers have boxed chocolates under popular game brands: Scrabble, Monopoly and Twister. I have seen them in several stores this week – on the shop floor in a high traffic location.
Maybe I missed the opportunity from one of our suppliers. I’d love to have had these available for Christmas – especially Scrabble given the other gifts I can get with this popular brand.
Brands sell – I’ll take branded product over cheaper imitations any time. They carry a better margin and are more trusted by consumers.
The free Christmas gift tags on the front cover of this week’s Woman’s Day are popular, driving a measurable boost in sales in a couple of newsagencies I have spoken with. This is an excellent issue to display at the counter and with the full cover shown.
Covering-up the headline with a stuck on not ad for Kogan on the front page of the Herald Sun today shows that News Corp. does not think headlines sells newspapers. It’s this disrespectful treatment of editorial content that maybe causes some newsagents to not regard newspapers as they one might have. Covering an AFL store in Victoria? Nuts!
I’m pleased to see pressure building on the federal government to retain the small business instant asset write-off. Killing the tax break with just a few weeks notice is poor policy in my view given that plenty of far greater and more direct financial assistance is not being cut or even reviewed.
The ACCI made a strong pitch yesterday for retention of the break and that story has been picked up by a bunch of media outlets today.
I understand the government pursuing its ideology but part of their election pitch was that they would support small business. This move has the opposite effect. An economist I heard this afternoon said that scrapping the benefit would have a higher cost to the economy than keeping it.
I am doing some work with a couple of newsagencies at the moment with two entrances: one at the front of the shop facing onto the high street and one at the rear facing onto a car park.
Each shop is long, has two counters, lotteries at one entrance, newspapers and top weekly magazines at both.
I’d be curious to read how others have dealt with the challenge of splitting products and employees between the two entrances. While register data from each entrance can help, I wanted to throw the topic open here to see what others have done.
Over to you…
Well done! to Dan Wickham and Rita McLennan the new owners of newsXpress Wollongbar for selling what is claimed to be the longest lotto ticket in the world (a fact currently being checked with the Guinness Book of Records). These first-time newsagents have attacked their business with energy. This very long lotto ticket is just one example of their approach.
Their local newspaper, The Northern Star, picked up the story of the long lotto ticket and featured it yesterday. other media outlets are chasing the story. The photo is from The Northern Star.
This is a great story for dan and Rita and their business. It’s also a great small town Australia story and a great story for newsagents all over.
Please pass on tips about stories like this – they’re inspiring!
Space is a challenge this time of the year. You want to put just about everything out the front of the business to attract shoppers and sell but there is a shortage of room. Here’s something that I find works. We make a seasonal statement at each entry point and change this regularly. Then, a few steps away, we build on the statement. Then we build some more on it and so on. This invites customers to walk the path of the season without making the front of the business too top heavy. The last thing I want is my newsagency to look like a discount variety store as people who shop those are not loyal.
I love this staple pack I noticed at David Jones in the menswear department – it makes staples sexy, something to give as a gift … of course, that’s why David Jones had it placed there with a bunch of other items they are pitching as gifts for guys. this is something we could easily sell – in our gift departments, not stationery. It’s something that would also command a higher margin than traditional stationery.
I encourage newsagents looking for funky gift ideas to visit David Jones – there are plenty of ideas for next year.
The team at one of my stores moved newspapers to create more space for Christmas and in the process repurposed an old fixture. I like how they incorporated magazines with top selling papers and the gift cards above the newspapers. This is a compact home for newspapers yet it allows easy shopping the range we carry including foreign language titles.
Data from several newsagencies comparing November 2013 with November 2012 indicates excellent card sales results. In six newsagencies, card revenue is up: 28%, 18%, 13%, 12%, 8% and 7% respectively. For perspective these businesses did between $10,000 and $25,000 in card sales in November 2013.
Looking deeper at the data, the good news is that in all six the growth is across the board: Christmas singles, Christmas boxes, everyday and lifestyle. This is important – that the growth is not just in seasonal product.
While each of the businesses was operating a loyalty program the cost to sales was 1% or less.
Three of the businesses are 100% with one supplier – this includes two with the highest YOY growth.
The other interesting comparison is the percentage contribution of cards to overall revenue. The highest is 31% and the lowest is 6%. Outside of lottery sales, the benchmark I target is cards accounting for close to 30% of revenue.
There is opportunity for all newsagents in these results. here was have newsagencies in shopping centre, high street and rural situations growing card sales. The common factor among all is their engagement with the category. They own the category in-store rather than leaving it for the supplier to own.
We’re heading to 100 of these cute Christmas-themed Ty Beanie Boos sold. While some have been purchased as a result of catalogue marketing we have undertaken, more than half have been purchased on impulse. Around a third of purchases were with other plush items.
In this newsagency our plush sales in November were up 22% on November 2012. Plush accounts for 10% of all sales. This business does not have lotteries products – I mention this to give perspective to the % of sale stat.
Part of our success with this and other plush items is off-location displays. While we have the Christmas Beanie Boo on the stand, we also have placement with boxed Christmas cards. This off-location work really helps impulse purchases.
A side benefit of such strong plush sales is that plush products attract happy customers.
I heard from several newsagents yesterday about the bagged pack of old copies of Uncensored magazine before I got to see it for myself. I call the pack trash because the magazines inside had not been prepared for sale -old labels had not been removed. The publisher should have paid to remove the stickers and at least make the product look more presentable.
On a side note: it’s interesting comparing stickers. They speak volumes about the differences among newsagents. I saw a hand written code on one cover, a price gun sticker on another and several different types of labels covering varying degrees of professionalism. These stickers demonstrate the extraordinary differences between newsagency businesses.
Here’s a second discount magazine pack I’ve been alerted to at Coles. World of Knowledge and Australian Geographic bundled and heavily discounted. Two issues here: bagged product and a heavy (and I would say unnecessary) discount.
Saw this discount pack of three AWW cookbooks for $14.99. The bag is promoting a saving of $23.86. The person alerting me to the promotion says it’s publisher driven. It makes our AWW cookbooks look expensive.
Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra are set to get a new print newspaper in 2014 – The Saturday Paper. Published by the team behind The Monthly, this new newspaper is to be distributed exclusively through newsagents.
I met some of the team behind The Saturday Paper a couple of months ago to discuss newsagent engagement. Their support for our channel was excellent. They are keen to get it right – from an excellent quality newspaper product to distribution through the channel Australians trust and love.
This launch is an opportunity for newsagents to embrace.
Here is a copy of the press release announcing the newspaper:
The Saturday Paper – A new newspaper from the publisher of the Monthly
Morry Schwartz, publisher of the Monthly and Quarterly Essay, is announcing the launch of a new weekly newspaper called The Saturday Paper. The first issue will be published in the first quarter of 2014.
The paper is being launched exclusively through newsagents. It will not be distributed to supermarkets. “I have always loved walking into a newsagent,” The Saturday Paper’s publisher, Morry Schwartz, said. “We want this paper to be important business for you because you are important to our business. We will give newsagents a 27 per cent commission on sales. We will do everything we can to make this work for you. While other publishers might have forgotten you, we want to launch as the newsagent’s friend.”
Like its sister publications, The Saturday Paper will publish long-form journalism on the country’s most important issues. It will be fiercely independent and offer the definitive news source for readers who want depth at the end of a cluttered weekly news cycle. Everything about the paper has been envisaged to make it a luxury product, from its marquee contributors to its heavy stock and crisp designs by Studio Round.
“This is something I have wanted to do since I first got into publishing 40 years ago. Now is the perfect time,” Morry Schwartz said. “I believe in quality journalism. I believe in print. While some in the industry have convinced themselves of terminal decline, I believe an audience exists for a new player to come in and do journalism better than anyone else. I am launching this newspaper because I know it will work.”
The CEO of the Monthly and The Saturday Paper, Rebecca Costello, said: “The Monthly has been recognised by the Australian Magazine Awards as one of the best magazines in Australia, and advertisers have been asking us to produce our quality content more often – to reach an audience that is not available anywhere else. The recent significant growth in revenue at the Monthly and themonthly.com.au confirms this and has put us in the perfect position to launch a new title.”
The Saturday Paper will be edited by former Sydney Morning Herald journalist Erik Jensen. Erik’s work has appeared in the Monthly and New Statesman and he is a winner of the Walkley Award for Young Print Journalist of the Year. He has also won the United Nations Association of Australia’s Media Peace Award and is the author of a forthcoming biography of the painter Adam Cullen.
“Erik is a gifted young editor. He has impressed me with his innate feel for news and his deep understanding of what makes a story,” Morry Schwartz said. “He is a natural provocateur and he will ensure we have a paper that is lively and important – that sees through the flaws in current newspapers and makes print vital again.”
In addition to news and politics, the paper will offer innovative lifestyle content and deep arts coverage. But the core of what it does will be what other papers struggle to do: long-form, investigative accounts of key stories. Like the Monthly – which has been publishing for eight years as the country’s leading current affairs magazine – it is launching because it is confident a gap exists in the market for quality long-form journalism.
The Saturday Paper’s editor, Erik Jensen, said: “The Saturday Paper is a chance to remake print journalism for a new generation. Morry and I have spent 18 months breaking apart newspapers and putting together a new kind of title that reconsiders how newspapers should do news. This is the sort of newspaper people want to read, but which doesn’t currently exist.”
The Saturday Paper will publish 48 times a year and will be distributed initially to metro areas in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. In addition to its tabloid print edition, it will launch with a fully responsive website and apps for mobile and tablet.
Supanews, the full-franchise newsagency group, has launched an online newsagency at supanews.com. The very slick site, with the tag line – Australia’s online newsagency – offers magazine subscriptions, stationery and lottery products – all available for online purchase.
This is the best looking newsagency website I’ve seen. Newsagents with online stores will want to check out this new competition. Supanews franchises probably have some questions, I can think of several.
CigarettsTocabboCigars opened in our shopping centre last week. Except for the name above the door and the cabinets of tobacco products behind the counter this looks and feels like a gift shop that is targeting to women and kids as customers.
The Tobacco Station store that has been in the centre for ages offers gifts aimed at guys that you could say sit appropriately with tobacco products. CigarettsTocabboCigars is the first tobacco store I have seen that is appealing to a completely different shopper to that which would usually see being targeted by a tobacco business. It feels to me like the products are a bait to attract a different shopper.
While I doubt they are breaking any laws by targeting young kids, I do think there is a question to be considered given the steps already taken to cut tobacco consumption and take-up of tobacco products by first time smokers. They are using brands that appeal to kids to bring them into a business that is primarily focused on selling cigarettes and tobacco related products. While the shop floor does not reflect this, the business name does as does the cabinets behind the counter.
The question for society and regulators is: what if all tobacco retailers switched to this model of looking and feeling like gift, plush and toy shops with a prime focus of selling tobacco products?
A reasonable comment would be what about newsagents? Newsagency businesses are kid friendly but they have a far broader appeal. I’d say that newsagencies selling tobacco – a number that is falling by the way – have a far broader appeal than that of what looks in the photo like a toy / gift / plush shop. Our businesses have not been set up with the bait I’m seeing in this new shop.
Click on the image for a larger version.
For the record, I don’t see tobacco products. I quit the category in 1998.
Customers commented yesterday on the front page story about Jamie Oliver in The Sunday Age yesterday. It was not a story, it was a paid four-page ad by Woolworths featuring Jamie Oliver. Newspaper lovers don’t like these wrap-around ads.
The back page of The Herald Sun on Saturday carried a full-page ad promoting the Aussie Animals cards that were the subject of much discussion here over the weekend. This ad proves that it’s a Woolworths driven campaign and that it’s broader in reach than the coupon in this week’s New Idea. It’s about a product exclusive to Woolworths in association with the zoo.
With newsagencies and other retail businesses packed with products and the colour of these and accompanying posters, try a simpler approach to promoting feature products and deals. Use a blackboard out the front of your store with today’s feature product or today’s deal. It could be that this simple blackboard notice is noticed more than a stunning and colourful display.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.