The masthead of The Australian was well and truly trashed with a house post-it note type ad promoting subscriptions to the newspaper. Given the money they spend promoting their masthead I’m surprised they covered it up for this promotion.
I got a severe tongue-lashing from a customer last weekend in response to a request that they take more care when browsing our greeting card range. This lady, in her eighties I am guessing, was quickly and aggressively pulling down on cards – further than the example I have in the photo I took after. She wasn’t reading them. She damaged three of our cards in what appeared to be a time-passing random act.
My approach was gentle, could you please not fold the cards forward like you are as it’s damaging them. I pulled a card out and showed here. I’ll do what I like sonny was the response delivered with a finger stabbing at my face. She pulled down a couple more while glaring at me and then left. I felt like sending her to the corner for some time out. She behaved like a brat.
What’s odd is that I don’t think she was looking to buy a card. It looked to me like she was folding the cards down because she could, like it was a game.
While this situation is not uncommon, we see it more at Christmas-time when all sets of crazy behaviour is on show.
Check out one of the odd teapots we’re trying out as part of an expanded gift range appealing to tea drinkers and those who buy gifts for tea drinkers. This is not something I’d have expected to see in a newsagency a few years ago. Today it’s not so unusual as we seek to expand our gift sales further – taking more revenue from the traditional gift shop.
Of all the new magazine fixtures I have seen installed in newsagencies and other retailers in recent years this fixture is, in my view, the best for a free-standing shop floor magazine fixture.
The fixtures – the backing frame and the three clip-in shelf units are space efficient, easily shopped. The shelves display more full covers. The deep pockets also work for displaying more titles with half a cover on show as I wrote about yesterday.
In a new shop I’m an owner of that opened this time last year, this fixture holds half of our magazine department.
Using a clip-in clip-out system, this fixture from Caem is what I’d consider to be best-practice for displaying magazines on the floor newsagencies. I don’t have any arrangement with Caem, they don’t know I’m blogging abut this today.
The announcement that Katie Couric will anchor a news program for Yahoo is a marker of significant change to how, when and where we access news, information and entertainment. That Yahoo is able to attract a star of Couric’s stature speaks to the extent of the changes we are experiencing. This is media disruption!
This move is about much more than the disruption of print by websites that we all talked about years ago. The changes occurring now are about breaking down the mega-channels of old media by disruptive mobile and related businesses. It’s not so much about whether people will switch from TV to Yahoo to watch Couric as it is about those already in the spas-pit in which Yahoo plays who will engage more because of Couric.
Mobile is the medium of the moment for news, information, entertainment and shopping. All of us need to understand the scope of what is happening here. The Couric announcement is a marker of the scope of change. The House of Cards TV show starring Kevin Spacey is another example of the shift.
I’m proud that my newsagency software company has offered Mandarin and cantonese language help for newsagents on software and general newsagency matters for more than ten years.
Click on the video to see one of several videos added to the video training library for this niche of newsagents.
I have recently negotiated a lease extension with the landlord for a high street retail business I own and share the story here.
I nominated that I wanted to take up the extension permitted in the current lease. This triggered a market review opportunity for them which they embraced. The landlord engaged a single local real estate agent who came back arguing for a 10% increase with little hard evidence. The double-digit rental increase was put to us by the solicitor for the landlord.
With the solicitor being difficult to deal with, I went back to the landlord explaining that I felt a fairer increase would be 5%. I explained that I had the option to reject their proposed increase through a more formal channel but would prefer to negotiate a middle-ground solution both parties could live with. I refused their argument of evidence form one real estate agent as being sufficient and reinforced that we had always paid on time and have been good tenants.
I was certain that QCAT would reject the landlord’s use of a single real estate agent and that the letter from the real estate agent did not, of itself, represent a fair market review.
After a couple of weeks consideration of my middle-ground proposal and several emails from me restating my case, the landlord agreed to the proposal of a 5% increase. While no increase can be considered to be good, it works in this situation. The business is tracking well and can digest the increase with much of what we sell not being fixed-price. Our approach is to chase more traffic, get existing traffic buying more and increasing our margin on all items through small steps on price.
I wanted to write about this today to encourage newsagents facing lease negotiations to be fair in their discussions with landlords, to always copy the landlord on any letter to their solicitor and to be clear in understanding what your next steps could be if you were to take a more formal dispute resolution approach.
While having a landlord who is committed to fairness is important, I think we can facilitate this in our approach to them when negotiating. They are entitled to ask for whatever increase they like. It’s where we end up that matters most. Where we end up often depends on how we approach the negotiation.
Negotiating a lease with a high street landlord is completely different to negotiating with a shopping centre landlord.
With more and more lower volume magazine segments we are overlapping titles to drive space use efficiency. Fitting three and four titles where we would usually fit three helps us reduce the retail space costs of these titles thereby enabling us to offer range for a longer period of time.
I’ve been in this business long enough to recall the push by Daryl Fedden of Gordon and Gotch for us to go with full face display of magazines. retail space costing what it does and magazine sales being what they are we will see more newsagents overlap covers to be able to offer the range in less space.
I love the placement of Christmas bags above the single Christmas cards in one of my newsagencies by the creative in-store team. In addition to efficient use of space, this placement provide a stronger Christmas pitch above cards and thereby makes them more noticeable. Click on the image.
These Christmas decorations form Jacman which light up and have a name on each have been selling exceptionally well. We’ve had customers buying four and five at a time. We have used them on the lease line to attract shoppers. What’s interesting is that cheap and nasty discount retailers nearby have similar looking but inferior product. We’re getting the sales because we have a better value proposition.
These cheap and nasty discount shops are tending more and more to copy us for product. try as they might, they can’t and won’t match quality and ultimately it is quality the shoppers you want actually want for themselves. So I say to the copycats, copy all you like. You’ll ultimately fail.
I’ve encountered two expensive and frustrating shopping centre landlord situations recently:
I mention this to show that while shopping centres are magnets for valuable traffic, this comes at an every changing cost.
Newsagents should read the financial performance report from SingTel and consider this in the light of the 25% pay cut Optus has hit us with.
I think Optus is targeting small business retailers because they expect we will live with the cut and not do anything about it.
The only way to deal with this is for us to hunt the company down at every opportunity and challenge them as to why they have cut commission from 4% to 3%. We should demand a reason why given that their profit has only fallen .2%.
Go on Twitter and tweet using their @Optus. Get to their Facebook page and ask why they are hurting small businesses like ours. get your customers engaged too. The more public we complain the more attention we will get form the company.
Bauer and Fairfax were scrambling last week to sort out the mechanics of an offer promoting Shop Til You Drop and the Sun Herald newspaper – the bundle is priced at $5. Key stakeholders had not been informed and had to work through processes to ensure that the offer could run as proposed.
The sooner publishers engage with all stakeholders the more prepared everyone involved can be for promotions such as this one.
Better preparation can reduce stress and streamline the process for newsagents and their customers. Doing this at the last minute can lead to a promotion failing. One day publishers will learn.
We’ve achieved a sell-through of more than 85% of Symply Too Good To Be True 7, justifying the decision to NOT rely return the new title in the very successful range. I know one newsagent who early returned all copies – they will have missed out on certain sales given how this issue has sold. This range will sell well through Christmas, always does.
I’m thrilled we were able to get stock of the launch issue of One Handed Cooks magazine. This is a very cool magazine, a nice addition to our food title section, a section we’re particularly proud of. One Handed Cooks magazine is being promoted on social media and newsagents are benefiting.
We’re promoting the Christmas issues of The Australian Women’s Weekly with prime placement next to our top selling magazine. We are also supporting the title with a second location placement to attract impulse purchases and will maintain this for another few days.
Newsagents should watch out for opportunities flowing from Summer with The Australian Women’s Weekly airing on TV on December 1 and Christmas with The Australian Women’s Weekly airing a week later. These now annual shows are always good at promoting the magazine. TV Tonight has more on the shows.
Fairfax media on the weekend reported candid comments from Optus CEO Kevin Russell about overcharging and what the company has done to improve the customer experience. Russell’s comments are uncommonly open for a telco CEO.
“Let’s be crystal clear. As an industry, we know how people use their phones, we know that young people will get their first smartphone and go bananas on it, we know people are going to get hit with a $500 or $600 bill, and we know that if they don’t complain we’ll get an extra whopping bit of revenue,” Mr Russell said on Thursday night. “It’s just crap.”
But he said he honestly believed Optus had been doing a number of good things to address “some of the things that piss people off”, such as bill shock.
I wonder if Kevin Russell would be as forthcoming in talking about his company’s soon to hit 25% cut in commission for small business newsagents.
The Optus commission newsagents earn for selling Optus mobile phone recharge product is set to drop from 4% to 3%. The company has not disclosed commission and commission movement for supermarkets and others selling its recharge product.
With SingTel (Optus’ parent company) profit down .2% YOY there appears to be no financial justification for hitting small business newsagents with a 25% cut in commission. Kevin Russell should be held to account for the decision by the company to hit small businesses in this way.
The company’s fairer approach to its customers should be reflected in its dealings with its small business partners – if it’s serious about being a better corporate citizen.
3% commission on Optus mobile recharge equates to 90 cents for a transaction that would take, on average, two minutes – by the time the shopper pays. The 90 cents does not even cover the hourly cost for retail staff on a Sunday and barely covers it for weekdays.
Hot Peppa screamed the above-the-masthead headline on The Saturday Age on Saturday. They’re right. Peppa Pig is hot. Our sales of Peppa Pig plush, magazines, activity packs and other items are excellent. It’s a brand we use to pull traffic from the mall outside our shop and it works! The article in The Saturday Age is essential reading for anyone selling Peppa Pig products.
We’ve been selling Peppa Pig products since their release and get excellent word-of-mouth traffic.
This photo shows how we place the Peppa Pig display unit on the lease line with two other plush display units. Each is sign-posted to connect with shoppers who know and love the brands.
These stands work best when full!
This is a brand through which newsagents can expand their offering and drive a better overall gross profit for the business. It all starts with understanding the opportunity.
With the stars of Anchorman 2 getting excellent TV coverage here today the timing is right to have the latest issue of Empire magazine placed with your weekly magazines or at the sales counter. This movie will be top of mind because of the publicity blitz. If we’re proactive we can expect to achieve impulse purchases of this issue of Empire.
The Sunday Mail in Adelaide yesterday had a hone delivery subscriptions ad stuck on the front page. I’d be surprised if any retailer was happy about this post-it note type ad covering part of the front page and pitching to retail customers that they should stop buying their newspaper there.
For many years I have published Christmas marketing ideas as a resource for others to use and as inspiration for newsagents to think of their own. Here are thirty easy to implement simple Christmas marketing ideas for newsagents for Christmas 2014. I’m not suggesting you use all: pick what suite you and create your own.
The best way to achieve the best price possible when you sell your newsagency is for the business to be as profitable as possible. The price you will sell the business for will depend on provable profitability.
Too many newsagents run their businesses expecting that their pay day will be when they sell and that the price will be a multiple based on some sort of industry formula. These formulas no longer apply except that of a sale price based on a multiple of net profit.
I urge newsagents to stop running their businesses expecting that their pay day will be when they sell. Instead, run your business as if every day is your pay day. The profit you make today and this week is the return your business delivers to you. If it’s not profitable then do something about it. It’s your business! Act! Look at your costs, your pricing policies, your marketing and your management. Take control of the business. Back in 2010 I wrote more on this topic here.
You don’t buy a newsagency today as a safe place to park your retirement money. No, you buy it as a viable operational business that delivers a return each day and week. Your profit today and this week is your responsibility.
The most important profit you will make is today and this week. Is this how you run your newsagency?
The current issue of Donna Hay magazine is another magazine benefiting from off-location promotion with this floor display unit placement at the entrance to our main magazine aisle. The gingerbread house on the cover is very appealing. Our display placement is at kid height – to attract their attention.
Sales of Women’s Health magazine are up thanks in part to this simple but eye-catching aisle end promotion at the entrance to the main magazine aisle in the newsagency. Sales are currently at a 50% sell-through with weeks to go in the on-sale for the title. We also have the title in its usual location.