I’d be interested in hearing from any newsagents in Queensland who have taken a tenancy dispute to QCAT recently. I have experience with the Office of the Small Business Commissioner and VCAT in Victoria for these matters and I want to compare the process to that available in Queensland. Click here to find our about the QCAT shop lease disputes process.
This past weekend provided an excellent example how we can drive business growth. On Saturday, I was thrilled to see people visiting our newsagency to purchase a Father’s Day card add a Smurf figurine to their basket. This extended each sale by at least $7.95. At a 50% margin that’s a nice extension. I was delighted to see this.
Add to these impulse purchases shoppers who visit specifically looking for Smurf products thanks to good word of mouth and we have a limited time niche delivering good revenue for our newsagency.
Most newsagencies have good base traffic for newspapers, magazines, greeting cards and lotteries. We need to tactically leverage this by engaging in opportunities … like the Smurfs. The best opportunities are those which are current – ideally promoted on TV or connected with a high profile movie.
The Smurf movie opens on September 15. Those who remember The Smurfs from years ago know about the movie as does a whole new market – kids discovering the Smurfs for the first time. This is why the figurines and other items are an easy sales pitch for us.
I have found that the best opportunities for leveraging good base traffic are those outside what would be expected from a newsagency.
Check out the display created by the team in of of my newsagencies to promote the latest issue of Feast magazine which went on sale on Monday.
This display confronts shoppers as they enter the store. It is easily seen by shoppers as they pass in the mall. It can;t be missed.
I love the display – it captures the richness of the recipes and stories in the magazine and is easily shopped.
The launch issue of Feast magazine did well for us. We are looking for good results from issue #2.
We have been promoting the Hallmark recordable storybook range behind the counter for the last couple of weeks. This stunning display features the range of these popular interactive gifts. We decided to use this high profile space to promote the recordable storybooks at this time to tie in with the national TV campaign funded by Hallmark.
The Hallmark Recordable Storybooks have created a new product niche for us. While others have tried to copy them, they have not succeeded in my view. You know you’re on a winner when someone comes back for their second or third purchase.
Newsagents in regional Victoria and regional Queensland are set to benefit from a new TV commercial which airs tonight for That’s Life. This TVC is the first of three 30 second commercials promoting the new Real TV section in That’s Life. If you are a Facebook user you can see the TVC here.
The Age yesterday has a report about a push by the Australian Retailer’s Association on retail pays. With governments supporting an open all hours policy, they need to provide businesses with the ability to operate viably under these conditions. In a newsagency with an average overall business GP of 32%, paying $40 an hour 9and more) on a Sunday is not viable.
Sometimes, the sales achieved for a title in a newsagency can be turned around by a change in location, some in-store promotion, co-location or some other support.
While it would be time consuming, newsagents should look through poorly performing titles, those with a sell through of less than 50%, and consider whether they could undertake some action to increase sales.
The alternative is to early return the title and facilitate its ultimate removal from the business.
Given that the majority of shoppers in a newsagency do not go deeper than the front third of the shop, the reason for the poor performance of a magazine could be the lack of creative and energetic engagement with the title by the newsagency team.
It is easy to blame the magazine distributors and they certainly deserve much of what we hurl at them. However, what if you could take some action which turned a situation around for a title. Surely you would be thrilled with the extra sales through the cash register?
If we do what we have always done then the result will be what we have always achieved. This is why we need to look at non performing titles and see what radical moves we could make. Yes, radical. Who knows, you could find sales you’re not currently getting.
I’d encourage newsagents to look at non performing magazine titles and take some action. See if you can achieve sales growth. Let us know how you go.
The cover of The Monthly magazine stands out on the magazine rack brilliantly. The pink provides an excellent visual cut through as does the headline – PORN WARS. We have placed the title so that the full cover is seen. To do otherwise would do the brilliant cover a disservice.
The Monthly continues to deliver excellent covers. This is vital to the title driving impulse purchases in newsagencies.
I’d encourage newsagents to put this issue of The Monthly at the counter. At worst you’ll get some complaints and at best some sales. Either engagement would be good for business.
Cycling magazines continue to benefit from a Cadel Evans effect in my newsagencies. The category is popular with browsers and in driving sales. I know from my work with bike retailers that magazines play an important role in easing people into cycling as a hoppy / sport. It’s logical therefore that people newly interested in cycling as a result of Cadel’s Tour de France win visit their local newsagency to check out the magazines.
UK comedy show The School of Comedy offered some thoughts on how to boost magazine circulation:
I am grateful to a Twitter friend for pointing me to this hilarious skit.
The Nicholson cartoon in The Australian today (pg. 27) is a nice treatment of our channel, representing some of the key products we sell while having a crack at the current financial health of Fairfax. I like that Nicholson has the shopper visiting a newsagency to purchase a newspaper, that there is a shopper looking at greeting cards for key occasions and that it acknowledges that we sell stationery for school. Thanks Nicholson!
Woolworths is pushing the Amazon Kindle through its supermarkets as well as Big W and Dick Smith stores. This past week the supermarkets have put up posters promoting the Kindle.
While pitched as a book reader, the Kindle is just as much a newspaper and magazine reader.
This pitch by Woolworths is growing a new channel for print products like magazines and newspapers. Newsagents need to be aware of this – not to be fearful or angry, but to be informed and strategic in our own business planning. This move is absolutely expected by those who follow the roll out of new technology.
Now go to TechCrunch to read the first review of the Kindle tablet, the next generation Kindle. This review indicates that the tablet war is just beginning and that the digital channel is about to reach a new group of consumers given the lower entry cost.
Magazine and newspaper publishers continue to invest significant resources in pursuit of revenue from these new digital channels. As music publishers found almost a decade ago, it is not a question of if this channel will become viable and then dominate but when.
While this tipping point is years out we have to make the most of today plus we have to be aware of and plan for the digital future. These are times of excellent opportunities.
We have two almost identical looking issues of Top Gear magazine on the shelves at the moment. One is the Australian edition (on the left in the photo) and the other the UK edition. We are supporting the Australian edition with better placement and with a co-location strategy (with newspapers for this past weekend). I would prefer that we are not in this position of having almost identical twins competing for shopper attention. While some might say that I shouldn’t be concerned because a sale is a sale, I am more concerned about potential shopper confusion. Don’t get me wrong, I am okay carrying the UK edition of Top Gear, I’m just not that keen when it and the Australian edition look almost the same.
We are promoting the latest issue of Coach magazine with this in-location display. Coach is a new title from the Men’s Health team at Pacific Magazines. The launch issue did well for us and we used exactly the same approach – an in-location display placed where guys interested in fitness and personal training will easily find the title.
We will also support the title with placement next to newspapers for a week early in the on-sale.
We have several gyms nearby and so we do get good traffic of guys interested in fitness as well as some personal trainers.
I like Coach magazine, it’s a well produced title filling a valuable niche need.
Winners are grinners as they say. Shoppers who win from a retail store are happy and they tell their friends. Whether it is a large or small prize, the value to the business of making winners of customers can be considerable.
An active and co-ordinated approach to competitions is a vital part of newsagency marketing.
The best competitions are those where a customer of the newsagency is guaranteed to win. That is, there the competition is store specific. While participating in larger national and state wide competitions around products brands and even franchise brands can be good for business, it is the local competitions which provide the best opportunity for local promotion and local leverage.
Here are some tips on how to use competitions effectively to promote your newsagency:
Competitions, regardless of size, can drive excellent results for a newsagency. Professional execution is the key from the planning stand right through to the drawing of the winner. Ensure that everyone involved including customers have fun with each competition you run.
When you find something which works, be sure to share it here.
We are promoting the Spring issue of Your Garden magazine with prime placement in the garden section. It’s responding with sales – selling half our allocation already. Since this is not a monthly title we need to remind shoppers that Your Garden is available – hence the high visibility placement next to popular monthly titles.
We took a range of steps last last week to leverage the Father’s Day opportunity to the max. The result has been an excellent year on year boost in sales. Cards alone are up 30%. Gifts are up. magazines are up beyond our natural growth too. While we have run the season for six weeks, here is what we did specifically in the last few days:
The result is a terrific boost in sales of Father’s Day cards, gifts and magazines. Indeed I saw plenty of magazines purchased yesterday for Father’s Day – customers were happy to share that information.
Maybe publishers could work with retailers on this rather than chasing subscriptions online for Father’s Day. My sense is that we going boost Father’s Day magazine sales considerably with a united and well co-ordinated campaign.
The knock-on benefit of being a destination for Father’s Day is the other sales we get from the increased traffic. Just wonderful!
I noticed the announcement this week that Aldi is to open longer hours and release special deals twice a week in an effort to combat the work done by Coles and Woolworths over the last year which has seen them encroach on the Aldi end of the supermarket space.
As the these three and other supermarket chains battle it out to own supermarket shopping in Australia, we can learn something from their fights. For example, the decision by Aldo to release specials twice a week is interesting to me on a couple of fronts:
Specials are not about deep discounting for the sake of it. In the supermarket model, specials are used to reinforce the overall value proposition of the supermarket to the consumer. They lure shoppers who then purchase other items at regular price. Specials almost always are funded by suppliers in a way which protects the supermarket margin.
But the approach to specials has changed in the last year with the down down and other campaigns.
The challenge to this non expert in the area is that through the focus over the last year on lower price, they have educated shoppers about price, that price is the most important point. On products on which we compete, this presents us with a challenge.
Given that price is the easiest point of difference for a competitor to respond on, I would have thought that supermarkets would have been better of pursuing points of difference in other areas where competition is harder. I think this is why we need to focus on non-price competition points in our businesses, especially around products where we compete with supermarkets.
Blue Ocean Strategy is an excellent book to read about how businesses should differentiate. I read it a few years ago and consider it to be one of the best business books I have read. It talks down price as a point of competition and urges focus on competing in other, exclusive, ways.
With plenty of what we sell being also available from supermarkets, how do we position out businesses against their aggressive campaigns and this latest battle now joined by Aldi? Do we try? While many newsagents leave supermarkets to play their games, not seeing them as our competitors, we need to ensure we are aware as our retail channel is of tremendous interest to them. We take close to one billion dollars in revenue which they would like to get through their registers.
I was interested to see The Australian newspaper advertising subscription offers as a Father’s Day gift … and not an iPad promotion in sight. Nice. The only enhancement I;d like to see as a retailer is a promotion which respects the retail channel and allows us to promote The Australian this way. Maybe a pay for ten copies and get 14 for free over three weeks – this could fit more budgets for Father’s Day.
Our Father’s Day card sales are up 41% up year on year to the close of trade Thursday night and we still have two full days of trade to go not including the day itself. We are having a terrific season. Not just with Hallmark Father’s Day cards but also with gifts. The Cadbury tool boxes (full of Cadbury’s chocolates) are working a treat. It is so much easier to sell well known brands, especially brands which are advertised on TV and elsewhere. Value based brands are especially useful since the purchase of these products is less about price.
In addition to cards being up this year, so are gifts. And with the excellent margin for gifts we are very happy with the wonderful kick Father’s Day delivers to our gross margin, taking us way above the average for a newsagency.
We are very happy with Father’s Day 2011. This used to be a flat and even dying season. Not now.
I have been doing some digging into the use of deals websites like Groupon and livingsocial by publishers here in Australia and elsewhere. It seems that more publishers are using these sites to drive sales spikes. The deals are usually better than those advertised in the magazines themselves and dramatically different to the over the counter single copy price. The pricing model is so different that I worry for the damage they are causing to their brand from such steep discounts.
Take the deal in Pittsburgh for Table magazine. $10 for a one year subscription. Click on the image to see the details. This 66% discount is extraordinary. It would anger me as a retailer who is asked by the publisher to raise the awareness of their product. Often it is the work of retailers in promoting a masthead that enables the masthead to undercut retail prices to chase a direct to consumer sales relationship.
Publishers ought to be careful in stepping up to using Groupon and similar sites. Their actions with extraordinary discounts could be the straw which gets newsagents so offside that we penalise participating titles as a result.
Our channel is valuable. More magazine publishers ought to respect that.
Check out the discussion on the SBS Insight program on Tuesday night this week. The Big Sell was a terrific discussion about retail and the structural challenges all retail channels face. It was good to see this discussion undertaken without the shrill which is often heard in such situations.
On the back of an excellent audit result, showing 24.62% increase in sales – ranking it third in sales growth behind Gameinformer and Men’s Fitness, the publisher of Caravan & Motorhome is out chasing subscription business with this post on a forum.
Dear Forum Members,
We’ve got some fantastic news and a great offer for all!
I posted a little while ago that Caravan & Motorhome magazine experienced the third largest growth in copy sales of any magazine in Australia for January to June 2011 – growing by 24.6% from the previous year. ABC audit Jan-June 2011
To celebrate this momentous result, we would like to offer you three upcoming issues of Caravan & Motorhome magazine and DVD for FREE, like a FREE 3 issue subscription.
For our current subscribers, as a way to say thank you for your loyalty to the magazine, this offer will extend your current subscription by 3 issues.
To those who are not subscribers, we would love you to sample the convenience of subscribing by sending you the next 3 issues for free!
There is no obligation to buy anything else!
So hurry, Offer expires September 30, 2011.
To get your 3 free copies of the magazine simply call and ask us to send you your FREE magazines and DVDs.
FREECALL 1800 801 647 QUOTE THIS CODE: FM450
While I understand that publishers need to grow subscriptions in their circulation mix, I wish some would more deeply engage with the newsagency channel to drive over the counter sales. Our retail channel is the most important outlet for attracting new readers.
The latest issue of frankie is flying off the shelves. So much so that we have ordered more stock. We think that this issue could end up 33% on our recent sales. Our display is working a treat.
Check to see if your sales are good. if so, make sure you order stock so you don’t sell out. Gotch has stock.
We are actively promoting the latest issue of Better Basics magazine from Pacific Magazines.
Trading off the Better Homes & Gardens brand and supported by the personality and passion for food of Fast Ed, this food title is finding good sales for me. It’s accessible and this is important with food titles in this specific part of the food magazine marketplace.
We are supporting Better Basics with this aisle-end display facing toward the entrance to the newsagency as well as placement with food titles. We will give the magazine a run in between our two major daily newspapers over the weekend as it works very well in this location.
This is a title we will support through the on sale as we see sales beyond the first couple of weeks. It’s important to notice these opportunities as it is easy to treat this like the bulk of magazines which see sales clump up early in the on-sale.