We decided to give these candles a crack in the run up to Christmas. At more than $50 each, they were going to be a challenge. But they worked! We sold enough to encourage us to try more for other seasons. They are not something we would carry all year but for Mother’s Day and Christmas we expect to have them again.
They worked best when we took one out of the box and ‘lit’ it. There is nothing like a practical demonstration to sell a product.
We are promoting the latest issue of Unique Cars magazine with this aisle end display facing into our men’s magazine reading area.
I like the competition being promoted with this issue – it provides an excellent reason for us to give Australia’s top selling car magazine time in the spotlight.
Just before Christmas there was discussion in the media about work between Coles, Woolworths and the ACCC on the oversight and regulation of their purchases of independent retailers. At the time, the ACCC Chair said they needed to watch for market power of the two supermarket giants.
Huh?! By any measure overseas, Coles and Woolworths already have too much market power. Farmers, wholesalers, independent retailers, logistics companies – many complain about the bullying of these two on price. The only winners are the shareholders of the two and while that is good for them, the economic damage of their market share is considerable.
Politicians concerned about small businesses and having a strong and balanced economy should legislate to stop Coles and Woolworths. Politicians concerned for the Australian voice to be heard through high street retail ought to legislate to stop Coles and Woolworths.
But politicians won’t act. When it comes to these matters they are all words and no action.
Without legislation, the ACCC is powerless in this area as time has shown.
The new owners at the Orange County Register in California are defying newspaper publishing trends by hiring additional journalists and adding pages to their print edition. The Huffington Post has a full report – read it.
Aaron Kushner added about 75 journalists and, with 25 more coming, will have expanded the newsroom by half since his investment group bought the nation’s 20th-largest newspaper by circulation in July.
Changes also include thicker pages with triple the number of colors to produce razor-sharp photos and graphics. By the end of March, the newspaper will have 40 percent more space than under previous owners, Freedom Communications Inc.
Kushner, 39, believes people will pay for high-quality news. His bet is remarkable in an industry where newspapers have shrunk their way to profits for years, slashing costs while seeking clicks on often-free websites to attract online advertising.
Of particular interest is their nearly five-fold increase in community news pages.
If their changes work, it will reinforce a theory among some that the medium is not the main cause of the decline in newspaper sales but, rather, the content.
This is a good news story about a new newspaper publisher taking risks and getting back to basics – giving readers more news that is more relevant to them.
I’d love to see Australian newspapers make moves like those at the Orange County Register.
We are supporting Women’s Health, Prevention and Good Health and their usual post-Christmas diet and health pitch with prime placement in our women’s magazine section.
Full cover display of these issues of Prevention and Good Health is especially important as traditional magazine fixturing will cover the free booklets attached to the covers.
I suspect titles with free booklets attached in this way work better in supermarkets where the full covers are almost always on display.
We are promoting the latest issue of real living magazine with this aisle-end display facing the front of the shop and our dance floor.
While it’s a good but visually basic display, the summer themed colours of the cover and poster do cut through against the sea of colour in-store. We can tell from activity at the display that shoppers are picking up the title.
Yeah I am selfish when it comes to Australia Post – selfish in hoping their corporate stores take on more services and have to deal with the rising price of stamps for falling mail volumes. The greater the distance from corporate Australia Post shops and newsagencies the better.
Check out the back to work window display being rolled our by Loius Vuitton stores. It’s visually stunning – like all their window displays. It is also perfectly connected to the season without being all about price or looking boring like most BTS VM displays look.
While Louis Vuitton sells high end bags with excellent margin, I do think we can learn something from this display. It presents a strong visual connection with the season which is enjoyable. Like any good display, your eyes are drawn to this window. That’s the first step to getting you ton consider the products on offer.
We often judge our displays against other displays in newsagencies. I think we need to judge them against other retailers as these are our real competitors. This is where we, each of us individually, need to make visual merchandising choices that are appropriate to our specific business situation.
For example, do we display to compete with a supermarket? … a department store? … a card shop? … some other specialist retailer? I think these are interesting questions as I certainly believe that the days of displaying in ways traditional to newsagencies are no longer relevant to us.
Click on the image for a larger version.
I like the mouse mat from Pacific Magazines promoting their nexus program.
The mouse mat has got useful information about the nexus program and how we can engage. Their use of the mouse mat to remind us of this is excellent. It’s certainly reminded me to check sales performance when using one of the computers at the shop.
nexus is a unique program in that it makes it easy for us to promote our businesses to existing customers, outside our four walls. It also provides the best transparency of our performance compared to other newsagents. I’ve used this to lift sales of a range of Pacific titles.
One of the major features of nexus is the email marketing. While we used this in 2012 we were not as regular as we could have been. Our plan for 2013 is more regular emails with exclusive offers to shoppers on our email database. These emails cost nothing to send. Every nexus newsagent should be sending them twice a month.
I’d be curious if other newsagents in major shopping centres found yesterday very slow. Based on what I have heard, many independent retailers had a very quiet day and probably did not cover wages.
New Years Day is like Australia Day. It’s a day for relaxing and forgetting shopping.
While there are plenty of positives for being in a major centre, a day like yesterday is a definite negative.
I was going through some of my 2012 photos and found this one which I thought newsagents would find interesting. It’s from a homewares and gift store in a mall in Denver in October this year.
The setting of the new products on what looks like a hay bale and a chequered table cloth makes for an eye catching and professional display. I also love the NEW ARRIVALS sign, it makes the point of the display very clear.
Click on the image for a bigger version.
May 2013 be a healthy and happy year for all who engage with this blog.
I believe that in business we make our own success or failure. We have to own our situation.
2013 will be a year of more change for newsagents and in the midst of change we can pursue opportunity. It’s hard work. It requires us to look at our businesses with fresh eyes and outside what we and others expect of us.
We all ought to make 2013 a year of pursuing change on our own terms and for our own benefit rather than waiting for it to walk through our front door and do its thing.
Newsagencies are good businesses to own, 2013 will give us plenty of opportunities to prove that.
A year ago I published a bunch of New Year resolutions for newsagents. I have revised the list in the light of what 2012 has delivered and what 2013 looks like. Here are my top three New Year resolutions for 2013:
If all newsagents did these things we would be a commercial force, a retail network, to be reckoned with.
Please add your resolution suggestions.
Click here to download the newsagency customer service survey results. The results provide a good insight into the customer service issues newsagents face.
48.6% receive complaints rarely, 27.1% a few times a month and 20.0% a few times a week.
53.0% of complaints are product related outside the control of the newsagent and 33.3% are service related outside the control of the newsagent.
55.7% of newsagents have a complaint handling process in place.
I hope that these results are of use to other newsagents. I certainly find them useful – particularly as a reminder to have a clear process in place for handling complaints and recording feedback to go to those who can improve the situation.
After all, customer service is our most important point of difference.
I am grateful to the 75 newsagents who took part in the survey.
We bought in stock of the Pumpinator to have for school holidays. It sold exceptionally well in January this year and while we did not expect the same interest we thought we’d have a second crack. It seems that we have a new generation of water bombers.
We had space so we put the stock out before Christmas. We sold out in two weeks. While we have ordered more stock for our expected January school-holidays interest, the sales success goes to show that getting stock out ahead of a planned season can be commercially valuable and educating.
We are getting known for fun and interactive products by shoppers who visit the shopping centre mainly at holiday times. We are buying products accordingly.
Given the comments here over the last couple of days about the story run on A Current Affair about the customer complaint to a Queensland newsagent, I have a quick survey on customer complaints. Click here to participate. I’ll publish the results next week.
The major retailers pitch price as the reason shoppers should shop with them. Some use service. the latest Officeworks ads pitch price, through a guarantee, and service.
Each of us needs to make a marketing pitch to promote our business. It should connect with our unique selling proposition.
If you do not tell people why to shop with you then what will they decide on? … because they like you? In this marketplace we need to regularly remind shoppers in our catchment area why they should invest time with us. We need to explain to them the benefits for them and their community of shopping with us.
In ads, on social media and in flyers – we need to tell people why shopping with us is better than the supermarket, convenience store, online store, major retailer or any other outlet competing with us.
No one else is doing this in a way that is relevant to your business sin your local situation.
Most newsagency software reports on items in each sale and average sale value. Both are important KPIs in retail but most newsagents do not not take notice of or target these KPIs.
Both items in each sale (in the basket) and average sale value measure the efficiency of sales in the business. the more items per basket and the greater average sale value the more margin dollars you get to bank per sale.
Long-term success for any retailer in today’s marketplace is all about small steps. Small increases in basket depth and value can add significant profit today and value to the business over the long term.
How do you grow basket depth and average sale value? …
All this is just a start.
Reports over the last couple of days indicate that Fairfax is in play, again. This time it’s Gina Reinhart and John Singleton. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
The recent history of millionaires and billionaires getting involved in media ownership has not resulted in good outcomes for consumers and those working the the organisations. The Fairfax print business has already been gutted and is struggling with the loss of many good journalists.
Reinhart has little connection with real Australia and as her writings show she has little understanding of what is good for the country. John Singleton owns the station that gives us Alan Jones. That he permits Alan Jones to rant on radio and wreak the damage he does makes me worry for Fairfax and its media outlets.
While I am jumping to conclusions here that go against the Singleton statement a couple of days ago, actions do speak louder than words.
Given the comments here over the last couple of days about the story run on A Current Affair about the customer complaint to a Queensland newsagent, I have decided to run a quick survey on newsagent customer complaints.
Do you get many? What are the complaints about? Do you have a complaints process?
Click here to participate in the three question survey. I’ll publish the results next week.
We have enjoyed good trading over the last three days seeing excellent sales for items we sourced to pitch as part of our port Christmas sales offer. Several other newsagents I have spoken with have said they are experiencing excellent sales as well.
As I mentioned a few days ago, to make the most of these opportunities we sourced product especially and offered valued discounts. Plus we promoted the sale outside the business.
It is at major sale times like this that being in a shopping centre helps.
People interested in disruption by digital platforms should read the PaidContent article about 2012 being the year of the e-single.
Articles and short form fiction and non fiction breaking free from mastheads will fundamentally change publishing and significantly challenge the models of newspaper and magazine publishers. With reader use growing the route market has never been easier.
There is nothing new for newsagents to fear here … change brings opportunity.
Several people have contacted me to say that newsagents were not fairly portrayed in a story on A Current Affair on Wednesday night.
I did not see the story so cannot comment.
On YouTube you can see a video posted earlier this year which was apparently mentioned on A Current Affair and partly played in the story they aired. Read the comments posted on YouTube following the airing of the story.
I have posted this here today for anyone who wants to comment. I’d be particularly interested in comments on the ACA approach.
The work involved in crediting customers for the non delivery of a newspaper for a day like Christmas Day is easy with most newsagency software.
Check out the email to distribution newsagents in Queensland from News Limited:
Dear Newsagent
We recently discovered holiday stops from the subscriber website were not being transferred into our system from November 17th to December 16th 2012.
As a result of this problem you did not receive any notification from News Queensland to suspend newspapers for some customers during this time.
The credit that was to be applied to your account for the papers that would have been delivered during this period was unfortunately debited to your account dated week ending 23/12/2012. To rectify this, your account for the week ending 30/12/2012 will have two credits applied, the first to reverse the incorrectly debited amount, the second to apply the appropriate credit.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you have any queries please contact your area sales manager or Circulation on 1800 648 591.
Circulation
News Queensland
I feel for the newsagents and the challenges the News Limited failure would have caused for them.
One Direction, the manufactured boy band from the UK, has delivered us an excellent christmas gifts with amazing sales of calendars, cards, scrapbooks, pencils, folders, puzzle books and magazines.
I really thought 1D sales would peter out at christmas but this has not happened. indeed, sales have jumped.
Having the best 1D range in the centre has helped. On Christmas Every one girl spotted our range and brought friends. These are current Dolly & Girlfriend shoppers and future frankie shoppers. While many 1D shoppers look only at 1D product, others browse and purchase other items.
The 1D phenomenon is a reminder of the importance of spotting trends early, leveraging multiple supplier relationships to make the most of the opportunity and using appropriate media – social media in this case – to promote the products and attract new traffic.
We have punched way above our weight with this product, attracting many new shoppers because of our range of product and commitment to the One Direction band. I am confident we could have done as well outside a major shopping centre.
Newsagents can attract new traffic and through this reinforce their relevance to Australians of all ages.