I’d encourage newsagents to check where they have The Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook – cooking for diabetes.  We have been enjoying success with this title placed with the excellent Diabetic Living title in our health section.   While cooking with diabetes does sell from our ACP cookbook display, it is this placement with health titles and, in particular, Diabetic Living, which works a treat.

This is an example of why newsagents need to engage in magazine placement themselves.  Being attentive to tactical placement will result in a sales increase.  Also, this type of placement enables us to play beyond what our competitors in supermarkets do.

Since the publishing of the results of the latest newsagency sales benchmark study earlier this week I have been asked by at least 20 newsagents about how to do a magazine relay.  I am preparing a post packed with advice on this which I hope to publish on Friday.  It is terrific hearing that newsagents are keen to get this done for their business.

We are promoting the How to set up an online business magbook in our business section. It’s an impressive looking title which is on sale at an ideal time.  This is an opportunity to show our relevance to the growth in online retail and to reach beyond what I think our shoppers expect to see in a magazine department.  We’ll also give this title a run next to newspapers as it’s not something people will visit looking for.

Magbooks are much bigger in the UK than Australia. I expect to see more come through this year.

We’re very happy with the performance of IdN magazine. By giving it better positioning, so the full cover is easily seen, we are achieving better sales and attracting more shoppers interested in design.

This is one of those niches in which newsagents can shine, a niche which is important to medium term magazine sales. You won’t see this title in c-store, supermarkets or other outlets. It’s a perfect newsagency title, an opportunity to show off our magazine specialist credentials.

While I am not a fan of the discount packs of current issues of magazines, we are giving them a go in high traffic locations to see if they do deliver the incremental growth which I am told happens in supermarkets and transit outlets.  We have a couple of these packs this week from ACP and so we have placed them on the basket builder stand at the front of the newsagency, with the non-discounted version of each title.

We are promoting the latest issue of Burke’s Backyard magazine with this aisle end display.

The display has been up over the weekend and as you;d expect we achieved some nice sales from this location as well as the usual location for the title.

What’s interesting is that the display is in the men’s section of the store, towards the rear.  We’re pleased that it working here as well as if it were facing into the front of the newsagency.  It just goes to show that being in the front of the newsagency is not always essential.

For no apparent reason, the magazine experts at Gordon and Gotch have cut our supply of Delicious magazine.  We have sold out, as they would expect. We have ordered extra stock to satisfy demand for this excellent magazine.

For magazine experts the circulation people at Gordon and Gotch sure make planty of mistakes. This cut in supply of Delicious magazine is unwarranted when considering our sales data.  This situation is frustrating. It provides another example of how newsagents are treated poorly in some supply decisions by magazine distributors.

While the folks at Gotch will undoubtedly have their excuses, given the volume of stock they received from the publisher and the certain returns from supermarkets, there is no reason they could have supplied me at a level so as I could achieve my sales potential.

Here is another example of how our team is embracing the personally recommendation of magazine titles. One of our team members loves the ACP cookbook so that she wanted to tell our customers. From a business perspective we don’t control these personal recommendations – otherwise they would not be personal.

Read the endorsement and see for yourself how personal this is. It’s another example of the personal connection with what we sell can separate us from other outlets which sell what we sell. While supermarkets get these cookbooks, they get them weeks after us. Plus, I doubt they would let their team members engage in this type of personal endorsement … they’d probably want to charge the supplier for it.

We need to find more ways to separate the shopping experience in our businesses from those of competitors, including other newsagents. This is a survival of the fittest marketplace and even the smallest touch which separates your business, on a good way, is vital for a bright future.

We have struggled to find the right place in our newsagency for Time Out Melbourne. We’re out in a suburban shopping centre and don;t have commuter traffic. Also, our shoppers are usually women, 35 and older, not your typical Time Out reader. We have the title with music magazines and with teen to twenty girls magazines.  But that felt wrong.  So, yesterday at around 5pm I moved it to next to the newspapers. True story – within five minutes a young guy purchased a copy.  I told him we were struggling with where we should put it. He was certain – Time Out should be with the newspapers, it’s where he looks for it in newsagencies. So that’s where we will place it for the first few days of the on-sale. Given the demand for this premium space we will either then move it somewhere else or find a way to create a display opportunity so that it can be permanently with newspapers.

It’s amazing what you learn when you seek advice from a customer.

Check out the counter display we have done for New Idea Jumbo Puzzler for this weekend.  We are planning on using this space in front of our Ticketek counter for a selection of individual magazine titles and categories of titles over the next few weeks.  Given the tremendous success we have have with this new title I figured that it was well worth trying at the counter. We still have copies in their usual location. This counter display will run for the weekend and into the start of next week.

This type of display is all about selling titles easily understood and purchased on impulse to shoppers who are unlikely to move further into the store to browse the magazine range.