PaidContent has published a terrific update on the state of US newspaper paywalls – based on a report by the Newspaper Association of America. Check it out. Fascinating. It includes the insight that the metered paywall approach being used here by Fairfax is the most common with 87 percent of newspapers allowing readers access to a certain number of articles before requiring a digital subscription.
I was contacted recently with a story about a nearby greengrocer who is offering a copy of The Sunday Telegraph for free with every purchase over $10.00. The usual price for The Sunday Telegraph at the greengrocer is just $1. The posters are professionally done, making it look like a corporate-driven offer. It’s hard for a retailer a couple of doors away to compete with this.
The person who drew this to my attention notes:
Two things amuses me about this brand devaluation: the advertised home delivery promotion is $1.50 per week so no incentive for me to commit to that AND there is no in-paper “hook” to get me to become a regular purchaser when this discounting ends.
I’d be interested to hear from others who may have noticed a similar offer from a local business – not one of the majors as we know about them.
I understand publishers are trying a range of activities to drive newspaper sales from subscriptions to deals around single copy sales. It is vitally important that they do not harm the established newspaper outlet by working with a new outlet.
I’m thrilled to be speaking at Business Adventure 2012, the conference for Western Australian lottery agents being hosted by Lotterywest in Perth later this month.
The agenda looks relevant and practical – unlike too many newsagent conferences. I am preparing a new presentation for the conference, an advance of the recent Newsagency of the Future workshops.
We are receiving plenty of terrific comments from shoppers and from employees about the new range of Father’s Day. With so many new designs in the seasonal offer, Father’s Day 2012 looks fresh.
The new collateral and black display units also help in making the offer look more enticing.
We have four units back to back on the dance floor. We don’t take regular cards down for seasons.
The new designs should help us achieve our goal of double-digit year on year growth for Father’s Day cards.
While the cover of the current copy of Science Illustrated looks good, it is the back cover is more compelling. Check it out.
How to survive floods earthquakes bushfires taps into topics close to us.
I was thrilled to see both the front cover and the back cover on show at one of my newsagencies this week. Excellent initiative.
Newsagents should check out the expanding range of WH Smith stores in Australia if they get a chance. This UK group is presenting a good alternative to the traditional newsagency model and the usual transit location model we have seen here in Australia. I mention transit locations as this is the focus at the moment of the WH Smith model here.
I’m off to New Zealand today for a couple of days of meetings and got another opportunity to check in with their Melbourne airport stores. The larger store, past immigration, is as impressive as ever – easy to shop, well zoned and easily managed with a lean employee roster.
If you get an opportunity check out one of their stores, especially a larger one when you get to see a fresh newsagency model in action.
I’d note that the WH Smith stores I have seen in Australia are different to what I have seen from many of their UK stores.
We have edited one of the latest Newsagency of the Future workshops into a 1hr and 25 minute video. I hope to have this available in YouTube later this week. It’s taking a bit longer given the length the YouTube requirements.
I have copied an idea from another newsagent and started pre-selling a new gift line we will be carrying shortly. Just a simple A4 at the counter and a sample of the item – showing how it works – has generated 20 pre-sales in a week. $200 in locked-in revenue. Nice.
When working through our food titles I came across Creative Sugar Craft. At first I thought this was an overseas title and sort of ignored it.
On my second look I noticed it was an Australian title, a good Australian title (I like cake!) – this got me to take time to think about how I could support the title.
Creative Sugar Craft is a title for these days of the amazing popularity of cupcakes and other baking. Get it in front of the right people and it will sell. While that statement – get it in front of the right people and it will sell – could be made about almost any title I think it’s more true with this one for several reasons: it’s a quality special interest title, it’s about a topic which is hot right now, it plays to our point of difference in the magazine space.
We are supporting by Creative Sugar Craft placing it at the front of the column, at eye level, with the full cover on display. We will also put it on our list of titles which we give extra attention to – at the counter and even with women’s weeklies … to increase the eyeballs that see it.
I encourage newsagents to seek this title out and give it careful attention.
We are promoting the latest issue of family circle magazine with this display in-location and several other activities including placement with women’s weeklies, featuring it at the front of the store and time on the counter over the next few weeks.
With a sell through for us of 97%, family circle is a terrific success. I put this success for us down to a mix of the product being excellent and us making sure that shoppers see title title through our various activities. Our hard work pays off in sales.
family circle is not always a destination purchase for shoppers – probably because it is not monthly. This is where we, as magazine specialists, need to play our role and chase sales. In our case, this work is working a treat.
The power went out at 4:30pm at the the shopping centre where I have one of my newsagencies yesterday. Thankfully, we have an uninterruptible power supply on our main computer and this enabled us to shutdown in an orderly manner. An investment of a couple of hundred dollars provides excellent insurance against this type of incident.
Regardless of the computer system you have, I’d suggest all newsagents use a quality USP – this is not something to go cheap on.
I took the photo in-store yesterday … shopping centres get dark when all the lights go out.
The Fairfax media yesterday ran a report on Australia Post teaming up with international shopping service Tarazz, saying it would be a kick in the guts for local retailers.
Tarazz reportedly offers around 250,000 items from overseas retailers including Walmart. The tie up with Australia Post is a bold move as it is likely to take business from local fashion retailers according to the report.
Several newsagents contacted me yesterday to alert me to the Australia Post move – given my disappointment that the policy makers (politicians) in Australia for the last fifteen years or so have let Australia Post creep way beyond the remit covered in the act under which it operates. Some were surprised that I’m not angry about what Australia Post is doing.
Unless I am missing something, this is a move leveraging the Australia Post delivery infrastructure. It’s what they are there for – more so than taking over the counter retail sales from small family run businesses as they do when they use their government owned corporate stores to specifically target businesses like newsagencies.
Okay, so they are facilitating an international retailer taking retail sales from other retailers and, yes, maybe politicians should have concern about that and the jobs that could be lost and businesses closed. But it’s not as direct a hit against retailers as Australia Post itself doing what it does to newsagents and other family run businesses.
Given that Australia Post is government owned, it has a higher obligation to Australians, a greater importance around social responsibility. Retailers affected could say this is not a socially responsible move. I best postal workers would disagree.
When it comes to small business, politicians on both sides don’t care. Oh, sure, they will say plenty – but they rarely do anything. They don’t see votes in actually supporting small business. I wonder if my view on the Australia Post / Tarazz tie up reflects this cynicism.
I am posting this here for others to comment. What do you think about this move by Australia Post? If you are against it, what are you going to do about it as that’s what it comes down to. Enough voters complaining about something can lead to policy change.
I was asked by a new newsagent last week for advice on how to use the ACP basket builder stand and took this photo of how we were using it in one of my newsagencies.
I figured I’d post it here and run through how we use the stand.
The photo shows our traditional use. It’s from last week. This is how we allocate space when we are not featuring a title or a category. On those times, the title or category own the stand.
In the photo you can see we have AWW and the puzzle book next to each other. We are using Good Health and the Pregnancy title as the beacon titles. They are working, pregnancy one especially. The placement of the two Shop titles next to each other is deliberate.
The last four pockets can be anything as they are the least shopped no matter what we put in there. That said, we make conscious choices on what we put in them – we do this by placing tiles next to each other that are more likely to work well together.
Taking care about what you put in a stand like this can generate extra sales and that’s what we all want eh?
I urge newsagents to check all magazine supplier stands and ensure that they are promoting titles from the supplier of the stand in the stand.
This stand from ACP and all magazine publisher stands are about making money for us. If they don’t then what’s the point! It’s up to us how successful the stands are – by what we put in them and where we locate them.
We take this very seriously.
The latest issue of Country Home Ideas comes with a terrific bookmark as a gift. It’s a good gift, well selected for the typical purchaser of this title.
The problem is that most shoppers will not see the bookmark as it sits at the bottom of the bag and will be covered by magazines in front and traditional magazine fixturing.
While the promotion at the top of the bag is good, will it get people looking? The bookmark is better quality than I expected. hence my concern about people actually looking at it.
We are addressing the challenge by placing the title at the front of our counter section – making the bookmark easily seen.
I am not sure what the publisher could have done this time around for putting the bookmark higher where it could be more easily seen would have meant covering the masthead. So … I don’t have an answer. I guess my goal here is to point the issue out to newsagents, to encourage them to promote the title so the gift can be seen.
We are promoting the new branding of New Idea magazine with this terrific floor unit toward the front of the newsagents, a full column display mid store and the new branding collateral supporting the title in its usual location.
We sold plenty of copies of the magazine off the stand in the photo yesterday. It is easily seen from the front of the store – we selected the location for this reason, hoping to tap into recognition of the TVC.
I love the stand provided by Pacific Magazines. It’s innovative, easy to setup and easy to relocate. Yes, I know not everyone got one. I’d note, again, that the stand is just part of how we are promoting the new brand.
ACP Magazines and newsXpress are running an exclusive GO GREEN AND GOLD promotion for the next four weeks with four entertainment systems on offer as prizes (valued at over $17,000).
The photo shows one of three locations in-store promoting the competition. We are promoting different titles in different locations. In the photo we are promoting the men’s titles associated with the competition – in the men’s area of the business.
This floorspace we have in our men’s area is special to me. It’s a place we get to feature titles with less competing for attention around them. It’s like we can talk directly with our male customers.
While not an official Olympic promotion, the GO GREEN AND GOLD theme is timed to leverage national pride. The campaign runs for four weeks and will use a number of external activities to drive traffic in addition to in-store displays to drive basket depth.
Click here here to read the press release with details of the brand campaign for New Idea which launched yesterday. Here’s the TVC:
In-store we are supporting this with the stand placed off-location and collateral in-location.
Access to the magazine storage units we have in one of our shopping centre locations is regularly blocked by pallets and other ietms stored in front of them by the fruit and vegetable outlet in the centre – as shown in the photo.
despite complaints to the fruit people and landlord, the problem continues.
Their blocking of access to our space causes grief with getting merchantable magazines as the delivery driver is not left with many options.
Tenants in shopping centres need to respect each other. We’re certainly not feeling the love from the fruit shop in this shopping centre.
Newsagents should check out Adele Ferguson’s excellent article in the Fairfax press yesterday (and online) about the ever expanding power of Coles and Woolworths.
While I am sure many newsagents and small business operators feel concerned, even helpless, about the even expanding grab they are making for sales in Australia, we have some politicians and regulators looking at the power of these too. We can support them by reminding them of the damage these massive businesses do in taking business from small businesses.
Check out my post from a few days ago on an ignored risk Coles and Woolworths pose to newsagents.
The Ancol trade day yesterday in Adelaide yesterday was a good kick off for the a crazy busy trade show season for newsagency suppliers. The fair was a good size and a decent number of newsagents came through.
What I really like is that the Ancol trade day is a one day event from 11am to 5pm. Yeah, it’s short but newsagents respect that. I’d rather meet more newsagents in a shorter time than have a whole weekend taken up seeing close to the same number of newsagents.
The mood of newsagents was upbeat … plenty of positive stories. It was great to meet some new owners as well as newsagents from regional areas who don’t often get into Adelaide for industry events.
yesterday was special because Newspower launched gift cards for Newspower members. I funded these for South Australian Newspower members through by newsagency software company.
We are featuring the latest issue of Shaft magazine in the floor stand in the middle of our men’s magazines corner.
This move is part of our education process about the title as it’s not something our customers visit expecting to find in our suburban shopping centre newsagency.
We will give it a week in the location before we return it to the regular location.
These dog grenades – they squeak when the dog bites them – have been one of the hits of our impulse gift range. Selling through plenty of them in three weeks along with a bunch of other products goes to show what newsagents can sell to shoppers who visit to make another purchase. I am sure they did not visit us thinking I’ll buy a dog grenade today.
The other hit has been the banana you squeeze. It serves no purpose I can see. Mose people who pick it up and squeeze purchase it. Very nice.
Adding items priced at a few dollars and with a margin of more than 50% to any other purchase is wonderful. The trick as I see it is to do this without giving your shop over to these items. No, I don;t want to become one of those outlets wholly focused on fads and novelty lines. There is a time and place for these – school holidays and leading to Christmas.
Based on our most recent experience I am confident that we can sell between $1,500 and $2,000 of products brought in just for a school holiday season. Yes, I know – we are in a large shopping mall and this gives us plenty of traffic. Only in terms of volume.
There are many opportunities in newsagencies for what we broadly consider to be gifts. The items we featured in this range is not what most newsagents would call gifts, certainly not a permanent gift department.
We purchased the items for a specific reason and it worked for us. This is what we have to do as out businesses transition – leverage existing traffic into new lines. We need to do this for the sales and to show our customers that we are not a traditional newsagency … we can satisfy a broader range of their needs.
While plenty of newsagents are on Facebook, not enough use the platform well. It’s a good tool for connecting with shoppers and prospective shoppers as well as researching products.
While I am no Facebook expert, here are some tips which could be useful to newsagents:
Facebook is a business platform. That it is a publicly traded company should prove this to anyone who doubts this. To use it as a business tool you need a plan.
Performance garage magazine is using its Facebook page to promote newsagents as the go to retailers for the magazine.
This is terrific support for newsagents and another example why each of us should become more engaged with Facebook – connecting with suppliers who support us.
My takeaway from checking out the Performance Garage page is a better understanding of their target market. This helps with placement and promotion in-store.
In fact, the Facebook pages of all magazines I check out are a great help … we can learn plenty from them. And we can broaden our reach by engaging with the Facebook pages.
Pacific Magazines are launching a new campaign for New Idea magazine tomorrow. It’s a significant campaign involving in-store activity as well as a TV campaign which starts today. We have allocated space to make the most of the opportunity – so we get max sales from the campaign. There is a significant collateral pack being provided to newsagents.