Almost a month ago I questioned the merit of the Justin Bieber cards we were sent through the magazine distribution channel.  While my disappointment with the 25% margin remains, the cards have sold very well.  Much better than I expected.  So much so that the team at one of my stores ordered extra stock and, yes, they are selling too.  Once again proving that I am not my customer.  We have them at the counter at the height which is friendly for girls ten to fifteen.

At the gift fairs I have attended this year in Australia and New Zealand, plenty of newsagents who trade in the gift space have shared stories of how they have learned the hard way they they, too, and not their customers.  Reminders like this are important as they drive us to create shops which appeal to our customers rather than ourselves.

This is where our team members can help.  In many cases, they are more likely to be our customers.  I see too many newsagents stifle their team member.  Saying no to their ideas could be denying your newsagency a terrific money making opportunity.

We received this bagged pack, Quick & Easy Quilting, on Friday through Network Services from Universal Magazines like many newsagents I am sure. The dark grey band across the plastic bag covers the title of the magazines inside the bag. It looks ridiculous. What were the production people at Universal thinking? Didn’t quality control at Network Services pick this up?  The product is sub standard in my view.

Why are they hiding the title – this is what customers will want to see. Are they trying to hide the title from newsagents so we think this is a new product? Do they want to hide it from customers? Who knows?

The folks at Universal Magazines, and probably Network Services, will say here he goes complaining unfairly about Universal again. They decided to cover the titles of the magazines in the bag.  They decided to send us a product which is of poor quality compared to other product on our shelves. They set themselves up for attention here.

Anyone who spends time watching magazine browsers in a newsagency will know that they do not like bagged magazines.  Especially special interest titles such as quilting titles.  Shoppers want to know if they have the patterns.  How can they tell unless they can browse the title.  I guess the discounted price counts for something.  But, then, the publisher and distributor do not get the customer complaints.  Nor do they have to pick up the trash when bags are opened.

While there is a title printed above the grey bar, you are left wondering what is really inside when you can faintly see a title different to the that which is printed on the outside of the bag.

I will leave the issue of bagged magazines for now – my views are well known.

The 1,700 newsagents using the Tower Systems newsagency software can very easily compare the performance of magazine distributors (or any supplier for that matter) across trading periods.  Using the Monthly Sales Comparison report in one newsagency earlier this week, I was interested in magazine performance for the first two weeks of March 2011 compared to 2010.

Click on the tiny image to see what I am talking about.  I have clipped out three lines from the the page report to illustrate the value of comparing magazine distributors.

In the newsagency for which I ran the report, magazine unit sales overall are down 8% comparing the two week periods from different years.  As the small sample of the report shows in the image, for women’s weeklies, unit sales are down 16% for Network Services titles and 6% for Gordon & Gotch titles. Indeed, for most of the report in this newsagency for this trading period Gotch titles perform better than Network titles.

I think it is important that newsagents have this information.

It would be even better if newsagents could take this a step further and report easily by publisher.  Sadly, the data provided with electronic invoices does not identify publisher so the onlyto achieve such a comparison would be with manual work and this would be too time consuming for newsagents.

Magazine distributors and publishers committed to transparency would provide newsagents with a publisher code for each title.  As things currently stand, we can only easily report on the data at the distributor level.   (I should note that in some reports we do strip our Pacific Magazines titles from Gotch and ACP titles from Network – this is done with manual work separating these.)

Outside of magazines, in various departments this easy supplier level performance comparison can be useful for newsagents: greeting cards, tobacco and stationery.

From a magazine perspective, the supplier breakdown by category enables newsagents to assess distributor performance and to use this when considering space allocation and current supply action.

Now, a note about the sample size.  I do not recommend that newsagents compare trading periods for two weeks as I have done for this example.  Comparisons should be at least a month.  Ideally, three months – comparing to the same three months a year earlier.