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

Promoting Better Homes and Gardens

better-homes-floor.JPGWe are promoting the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens with this in-location display, a six pocket placement with weeklies as well as a stack next to our top selling newspapers.  We will pare back this to two locations after the weekend – the in-location as well as with weeklies.  BHG sells well to the weekly magazine shopper.  Being very tight on space we have to engage in these tactical moves rather than the billboard type displays you see in many newsagencies.

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magazines

A lesson for magazine publishers and distributors

cal-2010.JPGMagazine publishers and distributors could learn a valuable lesson from Australian calendar publishers and distributors.

For years now we (and a couple of hundred newsagents) have carefully selected the wide calendar range we carry.  Each year we achieve double digit growth.  We carry the risk with a firm sale commitment and work the commitment hard by ordering carefully, managing floorstock, refreshing the displays and ensuring excellent customer service around out point of difference.

Calendar publishers are happy.  Customers are happy.  We are happy.

We and plenty of other newsagents are showing that a commercial and respectful relationship between publisher and retailer works.

We are achieving what magazine publishers and distributors say is not achievable with magazines in the newsagency channel. We are demonstrating that we have the capacity to manage our title range and product volume to the benefit of all stakeholders.

Any magazine publisher keen to break out of the out of date magazine distribution model and form a commercial and direct relationship with newsagents should look carefully at the calendar model.  It works.

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Calendars

Beware fake $50 notes

Fake $50 notes have been reported as circulating in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne this week.  Click here for advice from the Reserve Bank on the security features in Australian notes.  The fake I have seen is very good and easily passed at a busy counter.  Take care.

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Newsagency challenges

Leverageing Justin Bieber interest

bieber-calendar.JPGWe are promoting the Justin Beiber 2011 calendar in a high traffic location to connect with the heightened interest this week thanks to tickets going on sale for his first Australian concert tour. Molly Meldrum said on the weekend that the Bieber concert would be reminiscent of the 1960s tour by the Beatles. Who knows? What I do know is that Bieber has plenty of fans and their parents, friends and relatives needs gift ideas for Christmas.  Hence our prominent display of this calendar.

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Calendars

Analysis of the Fairfax CEO departure

Former Fairfax executive Eric Beecher wrote in Crikey yesterday about the sudden departure of the Fairfax CEO Brian McCarthy on Monday.  Eric’s commentary included:

There are two key elements at the heart of what happened at Fairfax yesterday, and has been unravelling for the past 10 years. First, no one knows the right answers to the existential threats to old media because many of the answers have yet to be invented. And second, in order to position yourself to find the answers you need to be competent, knowledgeable, intuitive, flexible and honest about what you don’t know.

Fairfax is none of those things. It is a dysfunctional company led by an incompetent board chaired by a former retailer, Roger Corbett, whose answer to the crisis afflicting newspapers is to sprout generalities such as “revenue streams of the future are all very challenging but we will be working to ensure that we deliver the very best” and “the really important thing is that we provide quality journalism that people actually want”.

Unlike Rupert Murdoch, whose local media arm has not just revelled in reporting Fairfax’s antics for a decade but is ruthlessly turning the commercial screws on their hapless competitor every day, the Fairfax chairman — the de facto “proprietor” in a company without an owner — doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and has no instinct for media at the precise moment that his company desperately needs such a person at the helm.

The truth is that “quality journalism” (whatever that means) or the “very best” is not enough. The solutions to the future of newspapers such as the Herald and The Age lie in their business models, not just in their journalism. And given the rapidity of their decline — each has seen its annual profits fall from about $100 million to about $20 million in the past few years — the solution is almost certainly no longer incremental, but seminal.

None of us knows how the disruption to print media will shake out.  What we do know that the waves of change are far from over.  This is why we newsagents need business and shop fit models which are as flexible as the business model needed for Fairfax and other publishers.

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Media disruption

Fairfax Magazines set for XchangeIT?

I have heard that the Fairfax has purchased NDD’s shares in XchangeIT along with some assets and is working toward implementing XchangeIT support for their portfolio of magazines.  This will take some time to establish as there is considerable IT infrastructure at their end to setup and maintain.  They are also yet to address issues like direct supply to retail newsagents who had direct with NDD accounts.

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magazine distribution

Quarterly Essay promotion works

Our decision to promote the latest issue of Quarterly Essay has paid off.  We will sell out this week. Plenty of purchases have been on impulse.  A $19.95 impulse purchase is very nice.  I hope other newsagents are promoting this issue near newspapers, full face.

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magazines

Does The Monthly look too mainstream?

monthly-soft.JPGThe covers of The Monthly magazine have been a stand out feature of the title since it launched.  They provided an excellent reason to promote the title in a high traffic location.  While I am no expert on magazine cover design, the latest issue of The Monthly looks boring, very mainstream. I don’t feel compelled to place this in a high traffic impulse location because of the cover.  That said, we are supporting the title by placing it near our daily newspapers.  I say, bring back the cover style of year ago and older.

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magazines

4X4 Australia selling very well

4x4-australia.JPGThe latest issue of 4X4 Australia has sold very well in a couple of my stores.  90% sell-through in three days.  I would like to say that it is something we did but I can’t.  The magazine is in its usual location, as the hero product of the 4X4 segment.  Maybe it’s just that it is Christmas.  Magazine sales overall are up this past week compared to the average of recent weeks.

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magazines

Fairfax CEO resigns

Brian McCarthy resigned today as CEO of Fairfax.  Fairfax watchers have been expecting moves or some sort as the company is publicly and privately coming to terms with its future in a digital (versus) paper world.

Just this morning, Mark Day, writing in The Australian, had a warranted crack at the financials for The Age.  While the McCarthy resignation appears unrelated.  The tensions at the newspaper and Fairfax more widely are connected with the same topic – the future of the print newspapers.

Newsagents can look at this as interested bystanders.  Or, we can consider more thoroughly the same questions the folks are Fairfax are wrestling with.

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Media disruption

Lads mags in the news

The weekend edition of The Australian Financial Review (page 4) had a report on the state of health of lad magazines.  It was comparing the decline in sales of Ralph (now closed – sort of) and Zoo Weekly (steep decline) with Men’s Health (tiny increase).  The article closes with the conclusion that intelligent content is king.

While the report was interesting, I think is missed the opportunity to look at sales of other categories and growth titles including motor vehicle titles like Top Gear and even MasterChef which we have found to be popular among men.

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magazines

Strong sales for Junior MasterChef mook

jmc-sales.JPGFive days after moving the Junior MasterChef mook stand near to the entrance to the store we have sold more than 50% of our stock.  My feeling is that we will sell out by the end of this week.  This is an excellent outcome.  It is also a lesson to some of the newsagents who said it would not sell.  I say some because in some country towns I can understand that the traffic is not there for volume.  However, we cannot underestimate the appeal of the MasterChef brand and the Junior MasterChef sub brand.  This was always a product to put in a high traffic location, preferably with other Junior MasterChef branded product.

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magazines

Ashes mini bat collection too late?

ashes-cards.JPGI was surprised that we did not receive this Ashes mini-bat and player card collection until Friday last week.  We are already into the second test!

Based on sales of Ashes related magazines I would have thought that the best time to get this product to newsagents was at least four weeks ago.  The other issue is the lack of marketing collateral.  The only way to make this product work, without decent collateral, is to place it at the counter.  It’s Christmas so counter space is more in demand than ever.

I would not be surprised if newsagents decide to return the stock unopened.

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magazine distribution

Hoops and YoYo a hit!

hoops-yoyo.JPGWe moved this display of the Hoops and YoYo gift lines to the front of the store on Friday for the weekend and the impact was immediate.

Not only was the product selling, it was attracting shoppers as they walked past us in the mall.  Kids are women are particularly attracted to this range based on what I observed – they love that these products are interactive.  I love the new traffic the range is drawing.

While we cannot give everything we sell time at the front of the store facing into the mall, we have enough well known and popular brands with which to attract passers-by.

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Gifts

Kudos for a paperboy

rob-mcgregor.JPGIt was terrific to see paperboy Rob McGregor featured in the Herald Sun on Friday as well as online.  Robbie (as I knew him) has worked for seven owners of newsXpress Pakenham – one of the early owners was the Bishop family.  I worked for the Bishops in 1970 and 1971 after school.    Back then, as I am sure is the case today, Robbie was your ideal paperboy – on time, accurate and cheerful.

Rob has delivered newspapers to homes on the same route in Pakenham for more than fifty years.  Last year, he was featured in Century of Faces, a special report in the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette to commemorate the centenary of this wonderful local newspaper.

The newsagency channel has plenty of stories like Robbie’s.  We ought to share more of them.  They are also an important record of traditions and the connection of our newsagencies with local communities.

Click on the image for a larger version.

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newspaper home delivery

Michael Buble sells out The Age

age-cd.JPGWe sold out of The Age newspaper before 11am yeaterday and could not get extra stock.  Every retailer around us sold out too.  Based on customer requests, we could have sold double the quantity supplied.  The folks at Fairfax underestimated the popularity of the Michael Buble Christmas CD.  This is a surprise given the TV advertising they ran during the week.  The CD was so popular that we had customers begging us to sell them the CD for the cost of the paper even though we had run out of newspapers. I would have loved to have been able to sell more newspapers.

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Newspapers

Note to newsagency suppliers: actions speak louder than words

There are some newsagency suppliers who regularly tell newsagents and those who represent newsagents how much they value newsagents and how important the newsagency channel is.  They say that newsagents are important to their business.  They sometimes throw out figures to support their argument.

My mum would say to us kids that actions speak louder than words.  This is so true.

Suppliers who find themselves often telling newsagents how important we are and how much they value us could consider how they reflect their words in their actions. If we are the most important channel: show, don’t tell.

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Newsagent suppliers

Newspaper publisher: digital must be first

Check out the report at GIGAOM about a speech by John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register group of newspapers in the US.  Paton says that the time for debate about digital versus print is over and that digital is the game.   He goes into extraordinary detail to make his case.  Click here to read the full speech.

Sadly, Australian enwspaper publishers will publicly ignore or ridicule Paton’s speech if asked.   Privately, our major publlishers are doing what he outlines.

The challenges his company faced in making its transition are similar to what newsagents face.  Those of us focussed on reengineering our businesses for the new economy are already seeing rewards in sales.

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Newsagency challenges

Improving the crossword title display

crosswords-beacon.JPGIn line with our recent work reducing range so that we can have more magazines displayed full face, we have reconfigured three columns in our crossword department. We now have three popular Lovatts crossword titles receiving more prominent display. We will give this space to Puzzler titles when their next issues arrive. If you look at the cover of Clue Words you can see the value of this move. In regular magazine fixturing, customers cannot see the feature personality. In our display, they can see that it is Bono. Bono has been in the news this week because of his concerts and his upcoming appearance on Oprah’s show when she is here next week. Showing the cover provides an opportunity to appeal to his fans whereas the regular display appeals only to Clue Words fans.

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crosswords

Damaged Health Smart magazine

healthsmart-damage.JPGCheck out the damage to the free cookbook stuck on the front cover of the latest Health Smart magazine.  Someone has browsed the title and shoved it back into the magazine fixture and bent the cookbook out of shape.  We will only be able to sell this copy if it is the last one left.  This is a problem for many magazine titles, not just Health Smart.

Right now publishers are addicted to these small stuck on bonus publications – cookbooks, garden guides, fashion guides, health guides.  They are designed to give off the impression that the customer is getting more than they paid for, bonus content.  The problem is that the stuck on gift is often damaged when shoved back into traditional newsagency magazine fixturing.

To this non publisher, the answer appears to be investing in better content between the covers.  Look at the stand out magazine this year in terms of sales growth.  Frankie does not use devices such as this.  The publisher’s focus is on the best possible magazine for its demographic.  Each issue is a sell out because of the content of the magazine itself.  Now that’s the kind of magazine I love.

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magazines

The marie claire travel edition

mc-pursepack.JPGLike many newsagents, we received the marie claire travel edition this week.  While we are giving this ‘new’ product a shot (next to newspapers), I don’t think this size will appeal to our customers.  I can see it working better in a transit or nearby location.  My scepticism aside, we are giving it a go in a high traffic location as I noted.  I chose the newspaper location because I see this version of the magazine as appealing to those not currently purchasing marie claire from us.

I don’t see the travel edition of marie claire as a cash grab.  The cost of producing and distributing this edition is too great to be that. What I would like is the opportunity to opt in or out with opportunities like this.  While that may see too many newsagents say no and miss out on something which works, there is the issue of cost of real-estate, labour, returns freight and theft.  These are considerable costs newsagents have to bear.

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magazine distribution

ACP partners with Coles on magazine subscriptions

Magshop, the ACP Magazines online subscription operation, has exclusively partnered with Coles to sell Magshop magazine subscription giftcards.  Here is the press release issued this morning:

Magshop Launches Magazine Subscription Gift Card Exclusively at Coles

The exclusive partnership of Magshop and Coles affords consumers the opportunity to buy $30, $50 and $100 magazine gift cards at checkout redeemable with a few clicks of the mouse for a selection of over 600 premier titles.

A magazine subscription is the ideal Christmas gift for everybody on anyone’s list. Just in time for holiday shopping, Magshop announces the availability of magazine magazine subscription gift cards exclusively at all Coles Supermarkets nationwide.

This special teaming of one-stop website and Australian supermarket institution provides the flexibility and convenience of gift card giving. Magshop magazine subscription gift cards can be found at all Coles checkout stations amongst the most popular and favourite Australian magazines.

As Australia’s premier online magazine subscription store, Magshop understands the stress of buying the right gift for the right person in a timely fashion can take all the cheer out of yuletide giving. Whether a Kris Kringle gift, Secret Santa surprise or proper present, it can be a challenge to keep a Christmas list current and chase down those last-minute additions.

Freedom of Choice
During the always-hectic holiday season, how easy is it to end up in the checkout line, burdened with purchases, only to remember Aunt Betty, or Uncle Bruce, or the guy in accounting who expedited that travel reimbursement in July?

Not all gifts are created the same, which is why Magshop gift cards are available in $30, $50 and $100 denominations to fit snugly in any gifting budget. Stock up while checking out at Coles to save both time and footsteps—both of which are at a premium during the pre-holiday rush. The recipient simply logs on to magshop.com.au to redeem the available credit on their gift card.

Best of all, the Magshop gift card allows that special recipient the flexibility to choose the magazine or magazines they want. With over 600 titles to choose from, the savvy giver can rest assured Aunt Betty will get her Australian Women’s Weekly fix, Uncle Bruce can enable his inner revhead with Top Gear and the guy in accounting… Well, he’s bound to find a magazine devoted to whatever it is he likes. From the Australian Yoga Journal to ProPhoto Magazine, selection won’t be a problem.

Peace of Mind
Magshop is the home of Australia’s leading publisher ACP Magazines, as well as a host of other publishers. At magshop.com.au you will find some of the most popular and successful magazines in the country, including Woman’s Day, Dolly, Cosmopolitan,

Madison, Money, Australian House & Garden, FHM and Wheels. With such a huge selection, there’s a magazine to suit all tastes, hobbies and interests.

Since George Coles opened his first variety store in 1914, the supermarket that still bears his name has been a highly regarded cherished part of Australian life. Today Coles is a leader in Australian food retailing, with more than 100,000 employees and 11 million transactions a week in over 700 stores nationwide.

Together, Magshop and Coles Supermarkets have devised an unbeatable solution to the dilemma of convenient last-minute holiday shopping guaranteed to please those special someones.

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magazine subscriptions

Which Darrell Lea liquorice is original?

dl-liquorice.JPGDarrell Lea liquorice in our store used to have the word original on the packaging.  The bag was striped.  This changed a month or so ago with their packaging overhaul. The changes never made sense to me because Darrell Lea liquorice customers are regulars for this product.

I was in Woolworths yesterday and purchased the Darrell Lea liquorice pack in the photo.  It is labelled original.   I have a few questions about this:

  1. How can this Woolworths products be the original product when it is not original?
  2. Is the Woolworths Darrell Lea liquorice the same as what I have in my store?  I suspect not because my shelf life is much shorter than the one year shelf life for the Woolworths product.  A check of the package details indicates that the products are different.  Theh taste different.
  3. Why does the packaging of the Woolworths product look similar to what we used to have?
  4. Is there a breach of the Trade Practices Act with Darrell Lea having different product with different shelf lives called essentially the same thing?
  5. Why is the new Woolworths product original and our original product no longer called this?

Maybe I am jumping at shadows.  Maybe not.  The two liquorice products from Darrell Lea certainly look, feel, smell and taste different.

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confectionary
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