On Tuesday last week, Flipboard launched a feature allowing its users to create and share ‘magazines’. Within 24 hours of the launch, 100,000 new ,magazines were created. This speaks to the tremendous interest in self-curation. With the magazines being sharable it will be interesting to see the reach into the special interest space as this is where I’d expect many to focus. Talk about disruption.
That the Fairfax newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald publish in broadsheet format on the weekends continues to be a talking point among shoppers. Most are confused about the different formats. The difference certainly gets people saying which format they prefer. Tabloid is the favourite from what people tell me.
While we have done a lot of work over the last year on serving younger shoppers and those who buy for younger shoppers – as regulars here would know – we have not ignored our older shoppers.
The photo shows one range for an older demographic we have been enjoying success with. These drawer liners, room scents, wardrobe scents and other items are popular with shoppers buying for themselves and with others buying as gifts.
One shopper noticing our range commented to me she was surprised to find we had them. She’s given up finding drawer liners for her mother. Just discovering them in our shop gives us the sale of the liner and a card and, yes, a gift bag. She said she’d tell her friends. Nice.
Beyond serving the needs of an older demographic, this range is beautifully packaged. Placed together it tells a nice visual story. I also like that we can place the range without taking up too much space.
The customer’s comments were a reminder that we serve people of all ages and having products that serve a broad range of need (but still within your USP) is best for business.
Here’s a 1-question survey: did you reduce your rostered hours yesterday?
Lottery products generate excellent traffic for many newsagencies yet many fail to turn the traffic into anything more than lottery product sales. Newsagents often blam their customers or the lottery products for not driving sales of other items.
Here’s an idea, a crazy idea, for getting the attention of lottery customers.
Get coupons printed that look like luscious red lips. Pay to have them die-cut. On the back have text like: five kisses gets you 25% off as many greeting cards as you want or five kisses gets you 33% of as much stationery as you want.
The key is to drive lottery shpper loyalty and to offer a reward for that. You achieve this with a simple, bright and unique coupon that is handed over with a fun pitch. Do all this and you’ll cut through to lottery shoppers who otherwise might never remember your shop.
Why a coupon in the shape of lips – kisses? Because it’s different. They’ll remember you for it. This is not another coupon, it’s a kiss and who doesn’t like kisses?
Go on, have some fun and promote your business. Turn good traffic into more sales.
I have been in a couple of newsagencies in the last week with product specific spinners filled with products they were not designed for. In each case, when I asked the owner they said they had not had time to do a reorder. And, yes, in both cases, the stand had emptied quickly the first time around.
Good newsagency software makes it easy to reorder stock that sells. It does not take much time. Taking this approach is another way to reduce back office time spent running a newsagency.
Every day you are without fast-moving stock is another day of likely revenue loss and a hit to the profitability of the business.
I have created a single question survey asking if you reduced your paid rostered hours today because of the cost of labour – it being public holiday rates today? Please click here to take the quick survey.
On the back of a sell through of less than 50% for People magazine, the allocations system / allocations people at Bauer have given us a 25% increas in our supply. There is no reason for any increase in our sales data. Indeed, a decrease in supply is warranted. So, I ask the question of other newsagents: has your supply of People magazine been increased without justification?
I’d rather not write a blog post like this. I’d rather not have the experience of a supply increase without justification in the sales data, sales data I provide to Bauer daily. I’d rather not have these mistakes occur – if they are mistakes. I’d rather not be put in a position where I think that publishers do this because they want newsagent cash to fund their businesses.
It’s not too much to ask to be supplied fairly based on the accurate data I provide.
Easter eggs have not done great for us. We had an excellent range of eggs from Chocolatier and while they sold okay, we had to drop half of what we purchased to 50% late Thursday to move the stock. This is on the back of Easter card sales being up 20% YOY. Majors nearby were at 50% off and we had no choice if we wanted to get to the close of today with all stock gone. We’re on track to achieve that thankfully. How did eggs do for you?
Julia Gillard says that only the Labor party will protect workers and keep in place penalty rates in place and protected with new laws.
Tony Abbott says the government should be replaced immediately yet he is offering no insight into how he would govern other than some slogans. He appears unwilling to pursue an equitable solution on the issue of penalty rates.
I am all for penalty rates where working on a particular day or at a particular time is a penalty. Like today, Good Friday – penalty rates should apply. Or even Easter Sunday.
Regular Saturdays and Sundays, they should attract no penalty rate. This is what the politicians need to address. If Tony Abbott did address this he could expect more small business support. As it stands, there appears to be no real difference between the parties on what is a very important issue.
In the meantime, we are stuck with paying around $40 an hour for what is reasonably unskilled work at a time that suits those taking the weekend work.
My frustration is compounded by the knowledge that in the US, retailers pay under $10 an hour any day of the week. I don’t want to change the base to that level. In fact, I don’t want to change the base at all. What I do want is weekend penalty rates abolished. Such a move would be socially responsible.
I have been going through our March to date numbers and comparing them with 2012 … cards, gifts, toys and plush account for 42% of sales and each is delivering well into double digit growth. Plush will pass $6,000 in sales this month. Not bad for what is usually a quiet month, Easter notwithstanding.
Magazine sales are up 2%.
Overall, revenue is up 6% on the back of flat traffic but a deeper, more valuable basket. the work we are doing reengineering our GP is delivering good results.
Here’s a good example of where there is value in promoting magazines in prime location. We are pitching the Scooby-Do interactive product from Hallmark at the counter with the latest Scooby-Do comic. We have done this to add value to the display – to both the products. It makes sense to do this rather than have the products in difference locations in-store. It’s all about leveraging the brand as much as we can.
Here’s a table outlining the gazetted public holidays over the Easter weekend FYI. Click on the image for the detail. Fair Work Australia will confirm the accuracy of the information.
I’ve been talking with three publisher representatives over the last few days about counter promotions. In each case, the titles were not high volume with sales per store expected to be below 10 and often closer to 5. In each case I’ve declined the opportunity. 25% margin for a low volume title doesn’t cut it for newsagencies in shopping centres and other high-rent locations.
Magazine publishers used to ‘buy’ counter space by giving us a professional perspex unit for displaying their title. Newsagents took such units because they looked good.
Today, the world, our newsagency world, is different. We have access to counter products more than double the GP of magazines. Magazines have to compete with higher margin products for counter space. Publishers need to understand this.
We put out these canvasses with optimistic messages on Friday. Today, we’re ordering more stock since they have just about sold out. This is another example of happy and optimistic products driving new traffic and achieving excellent sales.
We had the optimistic art facing into the mall and I saw it attract shoppers to the business. This is important – that we bring in products that of themselves attract shoppers. Newsagencies have too many products that seek to leech off existing traffic and that’s not great model for the future.
messenger COLLECTIVE launched earlier this month and from what I have seen newsagents are treating it as a fashion title. Despite the cover shot, this is anything but a fashion title. It’s a magazine with stories about business, about entrepreneurs.
I’d encourage newsagents to check where they have the title. If it’s with fashion, as it was where I took the photo, consider co-locating with business and inserting a book mark: this is not a fashion magazine.
messenger COLLECTIVE defies categorisation. It is worth taking the time to read it. from this you’ll better understand how to pitch it to your shoppers.
Newsagents selling Frankie should check out the Frankie gift paper book opportunity just announced by the publisher. This is a nice brand extension that stays true to the spirit of Frankie. This premium product shoud sell easily to your Frankie customers. It can be displayed with the magazine. Here is an excellent example of a publisher working with enwsagents, giving us the opportunity to decide for ourselves if we want to take on this product opportunity.
Click on the image for details.
We are promoting the Complete Guide to iPhone Photography with off-location placement with weeklies. We’re doing this since those most likely to purchase the title will not come in looking for it. This is a slim A5 publication, making it easy to place next to or with other titles without taking up too much space. We’ve had success with other promotions of photography titles away from their usual location.
Bauer has announced to Connections member newsagents that it will invest $2.5 million specifically into the newsagent channel:
Under the new leadership of Bauer Media, Connections is pleased to announce that this year, you as a Connections member will be given the opportunity to participate in a range of unprecedented promotional activity unmatched by any other publisher.
Over $2.5 million invested directly into Connections with Bauer members
In 2013, Bauer will invest over $2.5 million into our newsagent members including new line launches, a calendar of exclusive promotions and value-adding upgrades to field support – the biggest investment aimed directly at newsagents made by any publisher.The Power of Bauer.
Bauer Media is excited to provide member newsagents the opportunity to participate in a calendar of BIGGER and BETTER consumer promotions driven by our range of market leading titles including 6 of AUSTRALIA’S NUMBER ONE MAGAZINE TITLES in their respective categories.
A retailer specialising in products for celiac suffers in Queensland charges people for browsing according to a report in the Courier Mail. Given that knowlegde is a service in such a specialised area I think it’s fair they charge.
While we operate in a different space in newsagencies with magazines, it does make you wonder if sharing our regular readers is worth a shot.
Security people at one of the shopping malls where I have a newsagency returned around $65.00 worth of products stolen from us a couple of days ago. A team of a young girl, a lady in a wheelchair and another lady bought an item, distracted us and lifted a bunch of other product. Watching their action back on our security system was instructive as it showed where we were weak.
The only way we could combat them would be to introduce a greeter / security role responsible for bag checking. So that’s a question I have for this morning:
Do you check shopper bags?
I recall a newsagent in Hobart brought in a security officer for twenty or so hours a week and was able to fund the cost of security out of theft savings. I don’t want to go that far but I am curious what others do.
A subscriber to Vogue Australia noticed the collector’s case with the current issue on our shelves. She wanted to purchase the case by itself as she did not receive this as pert of her subscription. We declined. I suspect the publisher will get a call or an email.
It feels good to have an offer in-store that is only available in-store.
The creative team behind The Australian Women’s Weekly must spend considerable time developing the magazine cover. I wonder what they think of half the cover being covered by the mini cookbook stuck on the current issue. I think it detracts from the visual impact of main product – especially in a busy magazine department. Brand is everything.
The other factor is the damage done when it’s shoved back into the fixture by someone browsing the title. In one newsagency the damage is so regular that the freebies are removed.
While I understand these things are done to boost sales, I suggest that a free mini cookbook does not have the same value as years ago. Today, they are dime a dozen with magazines.
Newsagents should check the price at which the current issue of OK! is scanning. I have heard of several cases of it scanning at $4.95 with $4.70 printed on the magazine as the price. We have to honour $4.70. A colleague checked some other retailers and they are selling the title for $4.95.
UK newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror has launched an App for handling the payment of newspaper purchases according to a report in the Press Gazette.
The pilot of the free PaperPay app for iPhone and Android was launched this morning. It enables users to pay for The Daily and Sunday Mirror in advance, and then use a barcode on their phone to buy papers in newsagents, rather than with cash.
Trinity Mirror says the service can be used in more than 47,000 newsagents that have PayPoint or Payzone technology. As well as a pay as you go service, weekly, monthly and annual subscriptions can be purchased.
This is a smart move as it brings to regular over the counter shoppers the financial benefits of home delivery subscriptions. From a newsagents perspective it may not be so great as they may make less per newspaper sold – I am not sure of the details.
It would be easy to get a similar program up and running here – either through an App, a coupon program or a mixture of both. It would be easier to implement this type of program through newsagencies than the other retailers selling newspapers.