The video of the Newsagency of the Future workshop series from a couple of weeks ago is too large to get onto YouTube or Vimeo. Sorry about this. Please email me direct at mark@towersystems.com.au with your details and I will email you a copy on CD.
Officeworks has released a new campaign including a price based pitch in their latest TVC. Check it out.
My experience is that newsagents often beat Officeworks on price. Rather than being genuinely competitive, Officeworks says we’ll beat anyone else on price and reward you if we don’t.
This is a cynical campaign in my view. People will think that Officeworks is cheaper (because of the guarantee) and therefore shop with them rather than actually price comparing – and discovering that they are not as cheap as they say.
Local newsagents in Australia continue to offer stationery and competitive prices. The big difference between newsagents and Officeworks is that newsagents can’t compete when it comes to advertising. Their investment is in hard work supporting the local community.
We are seeing good activity with Father’s Day already. Both gifts and cards are moving well.
We have setup the displays on the dance floor and plan to move them to the lease line at the front of the business in a week’s time.
Father’s Day is more than the display in the photo. We have gifts, cards and magazines on offer. A six week promotion works best for the season.
New Idea featured on the Morning Show on the Seven Network this morning. Watch the clip for promotional opportunities.
I’m thrilled to have been asked to join the judging panel for The Maggies – The awards celebrate and reward the best magazine covers of the year. They are voted online by the public.
The Maggies are a great initiative for driving consumer engagement with magazines. It’s good that a retailer gets to sit on the judging panel. The process is transparent:
The nominated covers submitted for the Awards, which are open exclusively to Australian print magazines, will be shortlisted by the selected panel of industry judges. Voting is then put out to the public for voting via the website, facebook and pinterest this year.
It’s an honour to join magazine leaders and experts including chair Ita Buttrose.
MANSPACE magazine is the perfect gift for any dad on Father’s Day. We have placed it as the backdrop for Father’s Day cards and gifts. Shoppers looking at these will definitely see the magazine.
Other shoppers entering the business will also see MANSPACE magazine because of the high profile location and that we have ensured no visual clutter around the display.
We have deliberately gone for a display on both sides of the column so we are seen by shoppers entering through the two main thoroughfares into the business. Click on the image for detail.
We also have the magazine in what we call our thinking man’s section.
MANSPACE magazine is important to newsagents as it’s a special interest title the kind of title to drive traffic to our businesses and to underscore our point of difference. Newsagents who do not specialise in magazines and do not have any other product or service specialisation risk seeing their business performance decline.
Bricks and mortar retail today requires specialisation. The easiest specialisation for us right now is magazines. MANSPACE magazine is a good fit with this plan.
I’ve received a request for help. While we don;t easily have the depth of data sought, newsagents might have useful information to help with the research being undertaken on comic sales.
Hi Mark,
I am contacting you on behalf of a student at Caulfield Grammar who is investigating the impact the introduction of the iPad has had on the purchasing of comics.
We stumbled on your blog whilst researching and thought it would be a place where our questions could be posted.
Below is the letter and questions we are interested in seeking information around.
” Dear recipient,
Hello, I am doing a math project for school. It’s about how many comics are sold now that the iPad has come out; compared to before it came out. Here are some questions I’d like to ask:What was the average amount of comics sold in April in 2009?
What was the average amount of comics sold in April in 2010?
What was the average amount of comics sold in April in 2011?
What is the average amount of comics sold per month this year?
What was the average amount of comics sold this April?How do you feel about those changes?
Is it affecting your company majorly?
What type/brand of comics are most common now?
Has anything changed since The Avengers movie came out? (May 4th 2012)”Regards Kelli Simmons
Enrichment / extension program
If you can help, please contact Kelli at: KelliSimmons@caulfieldgs.vic.edu.au
Check out the display we have at the front of one of my newsagencies for Better Homes and Gardens out today.
The team here had this display up yesterday, teasing shoppers for the opportunity of this new issue.
While you have to be careful with promoting a new issue while the old issue is still on display, for a monthly the day before it can work … as it did here. I love this initiative and that it was taken without direction.
We know from the last audit that BHG did not experience the sales drop of other titles. It’s a good title to promote like this and place tactically on the weekend (from Thursday night) with newspapers and or at the counter.
Ann Nugent CEO of the Queensland Newsagents’ Federation was quoted in a report in The Australian Financial Review yesterday as being shocked by the announcement and that the QNF expected a consolidated run to be 2,000 papers a day and not the announced target of 10,000.
I am shocked that the QNF is shocked. Their expectation of a new distribution size of 2,000 demonstrates a lack of understanding of the economics of newspaper distribution, an ignorance of consolidation that has occurred elsewhere and a disconnect with what publishers have been saying on this topic.
No association should be shocked by the T2020 announcement. For them to say so would demonstrate, in my view, poor leadership.
The QNF quote, if accurate, encourages me to renew my call for the ANF to take control of T2020 on a national basis with a properly funded project office established to serve the needs of all newsagents. This is not something to stuff up, it is not something to leave in the hands of people clearly unable to lead newsagents.
Now more than ever the newsagency channel needs strong unambiguous leadership. Newsagents will get the leadership they want since the associations are servants of their members.
The ParcelPoint parcel pickup service launched a couple of months ago for newsagents is being embraced by newsagents. Connecting with several logistics companies, it is offering services to a broad range of companies sending parcels to homes.
Here is an update of highlights I received from the folks at ParcelPoint
ParcelPoint is an excellent opportunity for newsagents to offer a bonus service from their existing infrastructure.
We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health magazine with this placement facing the dance floor.
We have a stand of Women’s Health next to the title in pursuit of a bonus purchase. This has worked for us in the past.
Men’s Health can work as an early Father’s Day gift. We will pitch the title as part of our Father’s Day range closer to buying time for the season.
We are promoting the latest issue of InStyle magazine with this aisle-end display facing onto the dance floor and getting shoppers as they head to the magazine department.
This is the 150th issue of InStyle. Customers purchasing the magazine can win over $50,000 in luxury prizes with 150 prizes to be won by customers.
We also have the magazine in a half waterfall placement in its usual location.
Someone at the GNS Market Fair in Perth yesterday drew a distinction between shopkeepers and retailers, commenting that there are too many newsagents who are shopkeepers.
The shopkeepers are those buying they products they used to buy (mainly), the way they used to buy them. Retailers are those with new departments in their businesses and buying for them in new ways.
Walking around the GNS Fair I couldn’t help thinking that suppliers to newsagents are not doing enough to lead them to being retailers operating best practice businesses. We have too many suppliers operating in the old school way, happy to serve shopkeepers.
The News Limited announcement should be a wake up call for all involved with newsagents.
The world has changed and all of us in the newsagency channel have to change with it. It could start on the floor of the GNS Market Fair … I’d love to see radical change driven by suppliers.
The thing is, based on what I have been seeing happen at gift fairs in recent years, retailer newsagents are moving and working those trade shows more than the traditional newsagency show.
I am not talking about GNS here – it’s the warehouse through which newsagents access products. No, I am talking mroe about the product manufacturers and developers themselves.
But it comes back to newsagents taking the initiative and leading in their businesses.
Look at newsagency software. It has changed dramatically over recent years yet the majority of newsagents are not using the new facilities. The tools are there to drive more efficient and competitive businesses, managing by best practice KPIs, working on business costs, reducing poor decisions. Yet too many newsagents prefer
The magazine sales audit results published late last week make for difficult reading for some publishers and good news for others.
You can read the monthly results here and the weekly results here.
From a newsagents perspective, I’d like to concentrate on several items of interest from the audit results.
Overall, special interest titles are good for us to spend out time on. They are where we can demonstrate out point of difference and drive better sales outcomes.
We have started expanding the range of magbooks we carry in-store. One title we received late last month was The Essential Guide to Portraits.
We received five copies and have one left – 80% sell though so far. This is an excellent result and we are not done yet.
When was the last time you put your hand up asking to carry a title or a group of titles? We do this regularly and I am certain it is one of the factors in our magazine sales growth. As magazine specialists we should do everything possible to drive this vitally important point of difference we have.
On The Essential Guide to Portraits, it’s in the photography segment, a very popular magazine segment in our stores.
Under performing stock kills retail businesses including newsagencies. Items on the shelfs, the shop floor and in the back room which do not sell in the time necessary to generate a profit for the space they take, the labour involved and the cost of the stock are harming the business – unless they generate traffic which results in sales of other items.
While newsagents often complain bout parts of the business over which they have less control and for which they make slim margin – newspapers and magazines – it is in the areas where they have the most control that I see the worst performing stock.
I often find stationery, gift, confectionery and tobacco departments grossly under performing … holding businesses back. yet newsagents have complete control over these.
Here’s my tip – use your computer system to actually manage your inventory for profit.
To discover $15,000 in under performing stock in a business which is struggling is frustrating. With the tools available to newsagents today this should not happen. It’s poor business management.
What is even more frustrating than what I have written above is that some newsagents will read it and not do anything.
We keep our magazine posters for a couple of weeks for monthlies and a full week for the weeklies.
We do this because we will often want to create a display or setup some in-location feature some days or even a week or two, in the case of a monthly, after the on-sale.
Keeping the posters enables us to do this, to create a display after the title has been out for some time.
I have been surprised to discover that some of the newsagencies I have been into recently do not have a process for keeping and managing magazine posters. I’d urge newsagents to do this – set aside a place and make someone responsible for regular culling but also keeping collateral for a set time so that you can make the most of space and other opportunities you discover.
magazines aren;t a chore or an obligation in my view. They generate excellent traffic. Being creative and unique with the type and timing of displays is another way of showing off a point of difference.
The Carrie Bickmore cover story in the latest issue of Good Health is a reason to get the title out from its usual location as she appeals to a broader demographic than the one usually checking out this magazine.
We have tGood Health featured in health magazines. We are also giving it a run with the women;s weeklies to grad some impulse purchases.
Checking covers for extra promotional opportunities has worked well for us with magazine sales continuing to grow in our newsagency – against the trend.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age today have a terrific story about the success of frankie magazine. The The Age it’s on page 3 – talk about high profile. Newsagents ought to respond with a feature display of frankie at the counter, at the front of the shop or to shoppers as they leave … somewhere for the next week to connect with the excellent coverage the magazine is receiving today on the back of another industry-leading audit result.
Barack Obama was elected the President of the United Sates by a surge of hope for change on the back of a simple catch cry: Yes we can.
While his effectiveness in leading change and achieving goals from the wave of hope will be determined in the election in November this year, his campaign was effective in getting many Americans to believe in themselves again. I am certain that the campaign in itself led to individuals and groups embracing and leveraging change.
While some of us have spoken with and to newsagents about change for many years, the detail of the announcement from News Limited this year has made embracing change an imperative for all newsagents. I see it as a catalyst for better business planning, faster business decisions and better quality newsagency management.
I have spoken to many newsagents this week who feel that they can’t step from a business delivering 500 or so newspapers a day into being part of a business delivering 10,000 or more newspapers a day. While it does seem like a big leap, there are newsagents who have made the transition and many of these operators are happy to share their experiences with their colleagues.
There are newsagents who have merged runs to form a larger business. There are others who have acquired the runs of others to create their bigger business.
The core skills are business planning, operational process management and a focus on excellent customer service.
These are newsagents who have lived the transition already by chasing it for themselves. While there have been challenges, each of these have previous experience which can be tapped into by those yet to make a move.
This is a time for newsagents to talk with each other … to explore possible partnerships or to learn from experiences of others.
Newsagents large and small have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for hard work and working through change. The changes ahead in newspaper distribution can be embraced by the channel. I am sure of that.
Newsagents outside the three regions in Queensland that are part of the next phase should be talking with colleagues (including those who have consolidated ahead of the change) and considering business plans of their own. This should be happening now so that when their time comes to actually make a one they have considered all available scenarios.
Our channel has its deniers and procrastinators. Look at those who were shocked by the News announcement this week. The reality is that it had been forecast long ago and discussed many times publicly following first being forecast.
Most of all right now, newsagents need to believe in themselves … that they can navigate the changes ahead and take on larger distribution businesses if that is what they want.
I can be reached on 0418 321 338 for any who want to discuss the changes.
We have already sold more than $1,000 worth of 2013 One Direction calendars. We are confident we will sell three times this of the title before 2013 kicks in and before we have to pay for the stock. Our sales are helped by live in-store radio service promoting this and other product we sell. A regional newsagency in a town of 20,000 has already sold $500 worth of the title. Nice.
The April – June newspaper circulation audit results showed that every daily in Australia reported a decline except for The Mercury (Hobart) – no change and The West Australian Monday to Friday – up .2%. B&T has the details.
Comparing the 2011 results with 2012, the biggest losers were Fairfax titles – The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. My understanding is that a significant portion of the declines are due to eliminating uneconomic and free copies from audit numbers.
The decline for regional titles it a hit against a usually reasonably strong sector.
While I am not claiming doom and gloom for newspapers, the latest audit is a reminder of the challenges for the print form of newspapers and a reminder to newsagents and would-be newsagents to take this into account in business planning.
Here’s how we are promoting the latest issue of Feast magazine in one of my newsagencies. It’s an in-location display featuring the title in our food section.
We like the in-location displays as they tend to drive more sales success for us – certainly in terms of return on space used. In-locations displays also support other nearby titles … they act as a beacon to the particular segment – food in the case of Feast.
Publishers should look at sales uplift by store by title and issue. I suspect they would see that activity other than billboard type displays has a valuable impact.
The cover of the latest issue of My Weekly magazine is worth showing in full as it features David Walliams (of Little Britain fame), someone with broad appeal and likely to get people picking up the title who may not usually do so. We have situated this issue of My Weekly so that the full cover is easily seen … chasing sales as always.
I was fortunate yesterday to participate in a small group lunch with Federal Member for Lindsey David Bradbury, the Assistant Treasurer and the Minister for Deregulation. Also at the lunch in Sydney was a senior representative from Coles, Just Group, music retailers, toy retailers, Visa, Google, Deals Direct and EPAL (eftpos).
While the discussion was around regulation and the impact of online on high street businesses, there was also good discussion on penalty rates. Indeed, it was suggested that an EBA could fix the issue of crazy rates for casuals on a Sunday until it was explained that you could not move an employee from an award to an EBA which financially disadvantaged them.
I was interested to hear of the impact of online purchases from overseas on fashion, music and toy retailers here. Of course those connected with online – google and Visa at the table – don’t want to see the $1,000 threshold lowered. They say Australian high street businesses need to adjust to the new conditions.
The discussion considered the bugger picture of the download business as these items don’t come through usual customs channels. The downloading of books, music and movies is cutting hundreds of millions out of taxation. Indeed, the discussion on this exposed a a broader debate than I had considered on this topic.
I was fortunate to have a one on one discussion with the minister. We talked about newsagents and, in particular, regulation. He thought we operated under a regulatory framework for newspapers. I asked why and once he explained – that he can’t control which newsagent delivers papers to his home or office – I got to explain that this was not regulation … that it is as a result of contracts each newsagent has with their supplier. I took him back over 1999 and reassured him that we have not been subject to or protected by regulation since then. I asked him to pass this on to Bill Shorten.
I was impressed with David Bradbury. Him empathy for the positions of his fellow diners, his listening and the understanding he demonstrated of some of the broader structural issues the world economy is grappling with.