A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Customer owns up to farting in a newsagency

It’s true and happened this week. A customer browsing cards apologised for farting to one of our team members who was also in the card department, putting out new stock.  While there have been many suspicious odors in the newsagency over the years, no one has owned up.  How decent, any funny, is that! The customer was not embarrassed. Card sales slowed for a while.

Every newsagent has their stories of weird experiences with customers.  Here are a couple of other true stories from our fifteen years (next month) at Forest Hill Chase – but only read if you are prepared to be shocked.

  • About fourteen years ago a mother (in her 70s) and daughter came in an asked if we have magazines showing naked guys. The story was that the mum has been widowed for twenty or so years and wanted a reminder of what it looked like.  We were able to satisfy the curiosity.  Unfortunately, they were only browsing and not buying.
  • Not long after the mum incident, we had to stop a teenage boy (we think around fourteen) from accessing too much personal enjoyment from one of our soft core porn titles in the far corner of the shop on a busy Saturday morning. He, too, left without making a purchase.

Yes, we have had our usual run of kids going to the toilet – 1s, 2s and both – and parents walking away and other stories but it is these three stories which will stick in our minds.

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Newsagency challenges

Personalising lottery syndicates drives sales

syndicate-name.JPGWe have changed our approach to naming lottery syndicates and its is helping drive sales.  Whereas in the past we had used aspirational names, we have now linked team member names with the aspiration – as shown in the example in the photo – Jason’s Island.  There is an element of competition – by team members and customers – in the naming.  It’s fun.

There is nothing new in this idea, plenty do it.  I mention it here to reflect the opportunity of change.  This is the third change to how we name our lottery syndicates in three years.  While each change gives a kick, the change this time around has worked particularly well.

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Lotteries

Loving Country Living magazine

country-living.JPGHow great is a monthly magazine which sells 90% of its allocation within a few days of the on-sale?  Great, of course!

The latest issue of Country Living magazine has done just that.  In four days.  Yes, we are chasing extra stock.  We were caught a bit off guard as this is the Christmas issue.  However, we should have known better as all country related titles are selling very well for us.

We have not done anything all that special for the title – except use it as our beacon brand for the country magazines section – meaning we started with a half waterfall and with the full cover of the copy at the top of the waterfall on display.

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magazines

Promoting Wheels Car of the Year issue

wheels-feb2011.JPGWe are promoting the Wheels magazine Car of the Year issue with additional in-location space in the car section of our magazine display.

With the media coverage of this issue over the last couple of days we expect good weekend business for the title.  On the on-sale day we also had product located with newspapers.

The car segment is doing it tough so any opportunity to draw attention to not only a specific title but the whole segment has to be embraced by newsagents.

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magazines

Crikey brings attention to special interest magazine challenge

crikey-blog.jpgIt was good to see Crikey today cover my blog post about Rolling Stone magazine and the importance of traffic to drive special interest magazine sales in Australian newsagencies.  Crikey is sent to 35,000+ subscribers.  Hopefully magazine publishers take note of the importance of traffic in our channel to support the overall health of magazine sales in Australia.

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magazine distribution

Banking flood appeal money

floodmoney.JPGWe banked our first deposit of flood appeal money on Wednesday, $375.  We should have another $300 or so to bank by next Monday.  Customers are being very generous. As we promised our customers, we have the receipt on display, near the collection container.

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Social responsibility

Promoting Back to School

fhnbts.JPGWe are promoting Back to School at the entrance to our tiny 95 sq m temporary location with a table of specials and a help yourself flyer promoting these specials.  This promoting, right at the lease line, has been drawing good traffic from the mall.  As I mentioned a few days ago, it is also driving good, regular margin, ink business.  This year, our BTS campaign is tiny given the limited space in-store.  BTS is an excellent marketing segue from post Christmas sales into Valentine’s Day, no matter how big or small the campaign.

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Stationery

UK supermarket brings beauty salon to supermarkets

Giant UK supermarket group Tesco is launching a chain of beauty salons, with reports suggesting up to 70 salons by next year.

This is interesting on a couple of levels: the competition from a major retailer to a previously independent service offer and the extent to which a business like Tesco can and will evolve from its traditional model in order to achieve growth.

The second point is the more interesting from a newsagent perspective since we need to be discovering new revenue and traffic generating opportunities for our businesses.

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Newsagency challenges

New generation ads for the iPad experience

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a new partnership between a magazine publisher (Bonnier – Popular Science, Parenting and 53 other titles) and an advertising business (CP+B) highlights the pursuit of innovation by some publishers of new advertising experiences which leverage the differences of the iPad medium compared to the print experience.  Fascinating.  2011 is shaping up as a year of considerable change.

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magazines

ACP launches Magshop iPad app for digital magazines

ACP Magazines has made accessing digital magazines easier with the launch yesterday of an iPad app for its magshop subscription service.  The Australian has a report on this move.

ACP could not ignore the growing digital channel so I understand their move.  Hopefully newsagents take note and realise that the world is changing.

It’s galling seeing media outlets calling this a digital newsstand – it only has a fraction of the range available form a newsstand like your average Australian newsagency.

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magazines

Why is the Greens vote not reflected in magazine sales?

gmagazine.JPGSales of G and other Green issue magazines do not appear to reflect the strong voter support for Green issues as seen in the recent federal election.  Data I have seen indicates little or no sales growth.  I expected to see something given the extraordinary vote surge between federal polls.  It makes me wonder if the voter surge is people wanting others to do the work for them or  whether it is a pity vote – pity the environment.  While it could be argued that magazine sales are not a fair indication of community engagement with an issue, I would have expected that sales G and other green related magazines would provide a fair indication.  I am left wondering, why sales of green titles are not surging.

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Environment

Have you heard of Groupon?

Groupon is being hailed as the next big online ‘thing’. It attracts business from companies which would otherwise have used traditional media to reach consumers.

Groupon launched in 2008. It’s a deal-of-the-day website that is localised to major markets in the US, Canada, Brazil, Germany, France, the UK and a bunch of other countries. It offers one Groupon each day for each of the 150+ locations it serves. Businesses use the service as they would advertising except that with each Groupon there is a clear call to action.

The company just completed another round of funding which has resulted in the business being valued at around US$4.5buillion.  Not bad for a start-up from 2008.  We are going to hear a lot more about Groupon and the look-alike companies in this offer a day space.

I have been signed up for Groupon for a while.  The deals which come through, while not available here, are fascinating.

Zoupon is an Australian site which plays in the same deal a day space.

In a related story, Amazon last week launched an iPhone App which offers daily deals.  This and Groupon are examples of new channels for promoting specials and sales.

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marketing

Promoting The Australian Women’s Weekly

aww-feb2011.JPGWe are promoting the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly with one of our in-location displays.  These work a treat for AWW in our stores.

We will leave the display as shown in the photo in place for two weeks.

AWW is also on display next to the Herald Sun newspaper and this will stay in place for the first week of the on-sale.  Typically, in the first week, we can see 25% or more sales come from stock located next to the newspaper.

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magazines

Ink the Back to School opportunity for newsagents

ink-jan2011.JPGI was talking with a newsagent yesterday who was surprised to hear that I treated ink as part of the Back to School offer.  Given the volume of printing at home for almost all levels of schools, ink is a natural focus for any Back to School campaigns.  Now is the time of the year to help parents stock up.

We are enjoying an excellent boost in ink sales thanks to our price competition with the majors – while still maintaining a good margin.   We are promoting ink by offering a good range of brand name ink on display in an accessible location with easy to see pricing.

I’d encourage every newsagent to include an ink offer as part of their Back to School pitch – but don’t do the usual drop your pants approach to margin.

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Stationery

The desk calendar point of difference

2011-deckcalblock.JPGWhat’s your pricing policy on desk calendars?  With newsagencies the only retailers left with these in stock, we have an opportunity to reflect this in our pricing.  I am not suggesting price gouging.  No, I am suggesting a sale price which would up to, say, January 7 and then regular pricing which could be 10% to 25% higher.  The majors rarely carry items like this beyond the initial drop off in sales – they are volume stock movers after all.  These desk calendars will continue to sell in good numbers in newsagencies for another month and then enjoy slower sales for another couple of months.  Our priced today are 10% up on two weeks ago.

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Newsagency opportunities

MOJO magazine demonstrates special interest value

mojo-dylan.JPGThe latest issue of MOJO magazine with a young Bob Dylan on the cover is another example off what I wrote about a couple of days ago … the value of special interest titles.  There are enough Dylan lovers out there to help drive sales of this special issue.  As I noted, we need good foot traffic for these special interest issues of music and other magazines to work.  When we see a title like this which we know will have special interest appeal we show off the full cover and place the title in a good location.

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magazines

News Limited lets newsagents down on price rise

News Limited has announced a price rise for the Sunday Telegraph and while newsagents will welcome this, I am sure they would prefer a price rise for the Daily Telegraph.  While News has taken care of itself with advertising rate rises over the last ten or twelve years, they have condemned newsagents to be the working poor with no cover price increase in that time.

In the ten or twelve years that the Daily Telegraph has been $1, newsagents have faced many wage rises, rent increases and operating cost increases.  Also, in that time, News has pushed its product into more retail outlets, taking traffic away from newsagents.

That News has increased the cover price in line with even CPI is appalling behaviour against small business newsagents and other retailers who sell this product.

Footnote: the timing of the announcement of the Sunday Telegraph price rise is disappointing.  many newsagents would have preferred to know of Sunday so that they could let their customers know.

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Newspapers

iPad the Christmas gift for newsagents

I am surprised, and pleased, about the number of newsagents who have contacted me with news that they received iPads for Christmas.  Nice.

It is great hearing about the apps they have discovered and sharing some of my favourites.  Better than this, however, is their reaction to the device itself.  For most, the reaction is I get what the fuss is all about now … wow!

Once they go beyond the initial discovery, there is the pleasure of the productivity boost for the newsagency business from the device.  Great stuff!

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Media disruption

Pitching Valentine’s Day with flair

val3.JPGWe had some help in creating an attractive and attention-getting Valentine’s Day display in one of my stores last week.

Located in a prominent position on the dance floor, this display is easily seen by all shoppers as they enter the store and when they approach the counter to complete their purchase. Our plan is to move the display to the front of the store, facing into the mall for the last two weeks of the season.

We had some help creating the display and its shows with the display drawing excellent customer attention.  you know you have a winner of a display when you have a shopper in their70s standing next to someone in their 20s buying off the same stand for the season.

I think Valentine’s Day could be especially strong this year.  2011 has got off to a tough start floods affecting so many in Australia. While I am no psychologist, I’d expect people to be thinking more of loved ones this year.

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visual merchandising

Terrific New Idea cover

ni-floods.JPGIt is good to see Pacific Magazines go with a different look for New Idea with the alternative flood related cover on the back of the magazine.

Yesterday, we placed the flood special feature cover on display in the regular magazine fixturing and with newspapers.  We felt that the emotion of the image would work better than the more traditional cover – especially given the on-going flood challenges in Victoria and the coverage on the news.  Sales have been strong as a result.

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magazines