We received our stock of the Official Program for the Australian Open tennis tournament at one of my newsagencies just yesterday morning. Nuts! The tournament is half over. So frustrating. I wondered if they found extra stock in the warehouse and decided it was worth more out in the field late than sitting on their floor.
I have checked with in a few newsagencies which are sub agents for newspapers to see how they fared with the excellent Herald Sun Australia Day hat offer last Saturday.
If my survey is accurate, distribution newsagents with retail businesses which compete with their sub agents are more likely to have under supplied the hats. While some of these situations could be due to supply limits, I suspect that some reflect their continued under supply to protect their own competitive position.
Despite extraordinary efforts from some newspaper publishers to ensure enough stock of some giveaways, some distribution newsagents with competing retail outlets seem to find excuses for not stocking their sub agents so that they can reach their full potential.
A most disappointing situation.
Check out this post at a caravan forum from someone who bought a bagged caravan magazine:
Just purchased a caravan review magazine (it doesn’t matter what name) and I feel badly ripped off, the magazine was sold as a new issue and included two bonus mags.
But wait there is more, it turned out the review magazine was over twelve months old, I brought it to get details and prices on new vans, if a publisher wants to re issue a magazine it should be stated on the wrapping.
It has made my decision easy, I will not be buying any magazines from that publisher in future as there are other caravan mags
My feelings on bagged magazines, especially those with “bonus” issues is well covered at this blog. I think they are a rip off and a drain on newsagents and the environment.
It is only our returning of unsold stock which enables publishers to do this. As canvassed here recently, maybe we should stop returning unsold stock for some of these titles.
Despite claims from publishers that bagged magazine sell, many bagged issues contain old recycled junk. Some as old as four and five years. As they say at the caravan forum – caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
Check out the report about Canadian magazine distributor, Disticor, and their move into the app business offering digital editions of the physical product they distribute. What is especially interesting is the availability of back issues. Back issues used to be a ood market for newsagents and a point of difference for us. That point of difference is all but lost today thanks to our distributors.
We are promoting the latest issue of Melbourne Wedding & Bride with this aisle end display in one of my stores. Indeed, we have the title in prominent locations in all of my newsagencies. My experience is that Melbourne Wedding & Bride responds well to promotion in high-traffic location. While some sales are to customers seeking out the title, most purchases are on impulse. We are driving the impulse opportunity by promoting the $6.95 price tag – this is particularly good value in the wedding magazine space.
With the Darrell Lea Valentine’s Day merchandise unit late in arriving, our team has improvised by recycling a desk calendar stand and plaving it next to Valentine’s Day cards. It’s working a treat – especially having it next to our Valentine’s Day card display. While most of the Valentine’s Day business is done in the last week, sales in these early weeks are well worth getting. Also, a good display today lets people know where to come when they do want to purchase.
ASIC last week based Sandro DiDonato from being a director for four years because of matters relating to the collapse of Bill Express and OnQ. Check out the report in The Sydney Morning Herald.
I June 2008 I blogged about Sandro DiDonato and his role in a web of companies related to Bill Express.
It will be interesting to see if any of the Bill Express directors are ever held accountable.
Newsagents lost millions of dollars from Bill Express, They were led into the bill payment business by the ANF without any due diligence and buckled in the face of high pressure selling techniques – locking them into five year contracts.
The latest issue of HELLO! magazine sold out in under 24 hours at my newsXpress Forest Hill store. The free thongs with the title did the trick. We helped sales along with a full face display next to the weeklies.
My second point about this issue of HELLO! is a note for publishers. They bagged the title but in a premium way. See the use of colour on the strip at the top of the bag – promoting the thongs. Also, their representation of the magazine name. This is much better than for most other bagged titles.
While this strip at the top of the bag encroaches on the magazine title in the pocket above, the quality of the strip itself, is key to success for this issue of the magazine.
Amazon offered a $20 gift card for sale through LivingSocial, a 1-day deal website, for $10. 1.35 million people grabbed the deal. People grabbed it too: more than 1.35 million of them. Analysts are saying that while the discount was steep, Amazon got more value from the buzz of the deal than it cost in the discount given. Then there is the breakage – the gift cards which are not used.Finally, Amazon recently invested in LivingSoial so they are boosting their investment.
What is interesting here is how deals are now promoted. Companies used to pay for advertising in TV and in newspapers and magazines to promote special offers. In today’s world, smart companies are using sites like LivingSocial and Groupon and their communities to drive more immediate success for their deals.
Here in Australia, deal a day sites are still in their infancy. I’d encourage newsagents to check them out. They can offer a low cost marketing opportunity.
The New York Times has published a piece offering perspective on the Amazon deal.
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.
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.
We 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.
How 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.
We 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.
While US newspaper publishers continue to debate the merits or otherwise of ads on the front page of the newspaper, The Age has another ad stuck over editorial content – on this morning’s newspaper. Click on the image for a larger version.
It 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.
We 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.
We 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.
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.
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.
Rumors continue to fly around about the soon to launch iPad only newspaper from News Corp. The latest is that The Daily is to cost 99 cents a week – according to AdAge. That seems high to me for a US digital newspaper. Remember, their prices for newspapers are lower than ours.
The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Apple grabbed more than 7% of the global PC market in the last quarter in terms of unit sales. Extraordinary.
Yes, this is a fast growing new distribution channel.
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.
Playboy content without the nudity will be available in the iPad from March according to an announcement by Playboy. Yep, another story showing the growing penetration of the iPad and tablet channel.
Sales 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.
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.