Check out the error message on the directory screen at a large shopping centre I was in recently. The technology glitch meant no directory for the 300+ stores in the centre. Sometimes a manual system, list a director of retailers, is better than a computerised system.
We’ve placed the Halloween themed issue of the Cake Decorating partwork in with our Halloween products display.The partwork helps pitch Halloween as a fun party opportunity and this helps sell some of the party related items we have for Halloween tis season.
We did $17,000 in plush sales for the three months to September 30, 2013, up 57% on the same period in 2012. We will easily pass $80,000 in sales this year, delivering more than $50,000 in gross profit.
The growth is a direct result of an ever changing mix of product, our commitment to known brands and excellent shop-floor engagement.
We have created this success for ourselves, growing revenue for the newsagency from a category the channel has been engaged with for years but one which we have neglected. From a small inventory investment and energetic shop-floor management we have made plush a destination product for us.
I mention this in the context of the promotion Hubbed by the ANF and the questions and comments I have published here. For the same amount of money Hubbed wants newsagents to commit to its new agency offering a newsagent can get into Plush and chase a far bigger reward.
It is analysis in to categories like plush the ANF should research consider as part of due diligence when recommending business development strategy to newsagents. Embraced nationally, plush could be more valuable in terms of new traffic, revenue and return on investment to the channel than Hubbed. There are enough newsagents embracing it to be able to harvest good data, current data.
Whereas Hubbed requires a technology platform, marketing to drive traffic, focus on a single supplier and does not fit with products we currently sell, a product category like plush requires no technology, can be sourced from many suppliers, offers the opportunity for local customisation and fits with existing products: cards and gifts.
In pointing these things out I am not seeking to be critical of Hubbed. rather, I am drawing attention to broader consideration newsagents and their representative bodies could take into account when considering any new traffic generator. Before you make any business commitment you should take your time and undertake thorough research.
In my newsagency, plush is proving to be a game changer. Our success with plush is encouraging us in other areas. The pay-off is considerably more than our plush sales.
I reposted this Facebook post from Hallmark Cards Australia over the weekend and saw a considerable (25%) jump in Facebook likes for the Facebook page of my newsagency. In fact, it’s been the most popular Facebook so far. I think this is because it resonated with those who saw it – friends and friends of friends.
Sometimes the most successful social media posts are those that give people a smile or make them feel good without trying to sell anything.
Further to my post yesterday about the inaccurate report in The Australian, I am currently reviewing the data for the latest newsagency sales benchmark study and can see newsagents turning their businesses around, chasing their own success. What these stores are doing make for a good story and not the puff-piece The Australian ran yesterday.
We’re seeing good sales of marie claire thanks to our in-location promotion of the latest issue. This is placed toward the front of the women’s magazine aisle. It’s easily noticed in this location.
The Australian yesterday ran a story about newsagents yesterday: Signs of hope after agents battered by print fallout. Written as a puff piece to promote Hubbed Connect, I say it is incomplete for these reasons:
There are many newsagents who have successfully reinvented their businesses, newsagents achieving growth in shopper traffic and growth in revenue on the back of their own entrepreneurial efforts. Why does The Australian not cover that?
Yes, retail is tough and being a newsagent is hard work. This article in The Australian is written to serve a commercial purpose and for that reason it is incomplete and inaccurate.
Tatts started rolling our barcodes per product over the last couple of days and failed to advise those who help newsagents deal with such technology changes.
For a company that spends considerable sums on rating the customer service newsagents provide this barcode roll out is poor form. The company will see consider this blog post to be unfair criticism. Hey, I did not decide on the barcode change and neglect to properly inform stakeholders. Tatts people need to judge their actions to the standard they judge their retailers.
An experienced newsagency manager is looking for work in Melbourne. This young guy has good experience in a busy high-street newsagency with Tatts, magazines, gifts and stationery. While he’s not worked for me, I can vouch for him.
Click on the image for supply and return detail to see for yourself the supply and return data for Puzzler Simply Code Crackers and tell me if you think I am wrong to complain about oversupply of this title by Network Services in one of my newsagencies.
Issue 1/5/13: Supply 5, returned 1. 5/6/13: 6/1. 3/7/13: 6/5. 1/8/13: 7/5. 29/8/13: 9/9. 26/9: 10.
The magazine allocations experts at Network have been increasing my supply without justification.
Talk any supplier to newsagents and they will tell newsagents don’t respond to emails and rarely engage with opportunities. They will tell you newsagents are time poor. One reason newsagents are time poor is because they have to deal with a magazine distribution model that burdens them in out of data business practices and because they have to spend time chasing errors that bleed them of cash in addition to time – like this creeping oversupply of Puzzler Simply Code Crackers.
Newsagents strike out at all magazines because of the oversupply of some.
When the pick over the caracas of this world, an anthropologist will discover that the magazine opportunity in our channel was killed off by very few behaving selfishly while those who should have been concerned sat on the sidelines, on their hands.
The coffin arrived and is now in place as the centrepiece of our Halloween 2013 display. Sadly, like all Halloween centrepieces, it will probably sell early.
We’re making the most of the opportunity and showing others in the centre how to do Halloween – we;re expecting their displays this year to be like last, very vanilla (boring).
Sales continue to be excellent – up on 2012.
Newsagents should watch the video story produced by The Australian Financial Review on magazines. It looks at educating advertisers about readership versus sales and tracks some of the factors driving sales down.
I’d like to have seen the story cover more areas that I think are playing into sales challenges: too much range in some areas (too many imported titles), poor content and a supply model that disadvantages newsagents over other magazine retailers. I’d also like to have seen more publishers represented.
We were grossly oversupplied with a bunch of new small-format Puzzler branded titles last week. Not only did we get a bunch of new titles we did not need to satisfy shopper interest in puzzles but we got way too many. Ten copies of a new title is too many.
Crossword and puzzle magazine publishers using Network Services should be asking why Network did this. from where I sit this action can only dilute attention for existing puzzle and crossword titles. For example, what do Lovatts think about this – a bunch of new titles competing directly with their mini books and distributed by the same company.
We’re short on room so on the weekend I decided to early return the new Puzzler titles. A better approach would have been for Network to give newsagents control over whether they took on these titles and if they did, the volume they desired.
This is a good example of the broken magazine distribution model in Australia that magazine publishers and distributors enable.
Footnote: occasionally when I write a post about the magazine distribution model I think why bother? Nothing changes right? The thing that keeps me chronicling just some of what newsagents have to put up with is that one day someone who can drive genuine change will realise the harm done by a few to what should be the most important route to market for Australian magazine publishers.
We have a spinner packed with Peppa Pig product on our lease line as I have noted here previously. On Saturday I saw the importance of this stand in attracting shoppers to the business who might otherwise not have shopped with us.
Standing outside the newsagency I watched as a young girl dragged mum, dad and an older sister to look at Peppa. She pointed to the sign on top of the spinner. She bought a Peppa and the older sister bought another plush item. The parents bought two greeting cards.
Sometimes we don’t need a big billboard display to attract shoppers. Sometimes, easy to see well-located placement of a recognisable brand can attract traffic that otherwise you may not have attracted.
Footnote: our discount vouchers helped us maximise the opportunity from this family. Total spend was in excess of $35. The team working in this newsagency created this success for us.
We’ve been promoting the latest part in the Great Bakes partwork series with TV Week since this title appeals to those who watch the baking shows on TV. It’s all about putting product where the shopper most likely to be interested will stumble across it.
Every car owned by a newsagency business or owned by the owner of a newsagency should have a full rear window ad promoting the business. The cost is low and the space is free. Check out Autoskin, Sign A Rama and similar companies.
If you have people working in your newsagency who disagree with the direction of the business and or changes you are making then you need to act. Either they wholeheartedly support your moves or they go. Having people remain working for you when they disagree with what you are doing can harm the business and distract from the changes you want made.
It’s one thing to have a robust debate about changes you may make and another entirely to face disruptive challenges to every move you make.
I was talking to a relatively new newsagent this week (they’re six months in) about the challenges of a long-term employee of the business who questions almost every move they make, complains about them behind their back and even undoes changes on the weekend if the owners are away. I told them to issue a written warning to the full-time employee with a view to termination if their behaviour does not change.
The employee in this business was being passive-agressive to the new owner and exerting more control over the business than they should. Given that the business has less that 15 employees the owner has options for a faster resolution of what is a toxic situation.
Newsagents need to act as the owners they are. They need to lead the business and run it from a position of authority.
While I welcome debate about change in any business I own, once a decision is made I expect 100% support from all team members.
We’re promoting Bathurst magazines between newsagents as well as their usual location. Many people whole will buy Bathurst titles are not likely to go looking for them – hence our placement to drive impulse purchases. Every extra sale counts.
The Herald Sun yesterday has an ad for home delivery stuck over editorial content on the front page. Thankfully removing the sticker did not damage the product … customers were only partially frustrated. I guess they work at shifting people from retail to home delivery. sigh.
The story this week about an error in payroll processing at Bauer that saw some employees paid late is a timely reminder about the importance of processes for paying people: same day, same time, with a properly documented payslip showing full details and the ability to reprint any information at any time. No cash in hand payments.
I urge newsagents to take part in the brief survey from the publisher of Australian Traveller magazine.
STOP MAGAZINE OVERSUPPLY is the headline stripped across the cover of the October 1998 edition of National Newsagent magazine. Inside, the magazine has a series of reports about the challenges of magazine supply encountered by newsagents and what various stakeholders think about this. Plenty reporting on the problems, some suggested solutions but – as time has shown, no resolution.
One thing that struck me re-reading the magazine is the number of supplier representatives we have dealt with over the years who have joined our channel, looked at magazine distribution and said it’s not fair and that they would do everything possible to resolve this. Then they move on.
The head of Network Distribution Company at the time, Godron Toft, is quoted as calling for a minimum 50% sell through for magazines. He said Network already achieved that figure. Toft was probably right overall but certainly wrong on a title by title basis, especially if you took out ACP titles from the network pool. Toft’s call and claim are a good example of data being manipulated to serve suppliers and not newsagents.
Newsagents today are responding to magazine oversupply by cutting magazine display space. While this can fix parts of the problem, it does not necessarily feed into long-term business plans for a newsagency of the future. My view is that a reasonable magazine range is important to attracting a viable mix and number of customers to a newsagency.
I came across this issue of National Newsagent yesterday when culling some old papers. It’s not the only material from fifteen and more years ago about magazine distribution to newsagencies.
paidContent reports that The Dallas Morning News has pulled down its paywall, saying the strategy failed to generate enough reader interest. This is the second major US newspaper to pull down their paywall.
The sticker on the front of The Daily Telegraph newspaper today advertising a print and digital subscription was impossible to remove without damaging the front page. If this is their plan, to use a stronger adhesive, they will alienate even more customers.
ePay is experiencing issues serving WA retail locations who use iiNet as their ISP. ePay is aware of the issue.