We are promoting Take 5 magazine in its usual place as well as next to our main newspaper stand as shown in the photo. While the dump bin display is not as professional looking as we would like, it was the best way we could display volume given the free pack of mentos gum bagged with the magazine. Our placement and easy access display will hopefully drive incremental business.
The latest issue of Dolly magazine came out today without any collateral, not even a poster. I am not sure if we missed a collateral delivery or if the title is slated for promotion later in the on-sale.
No matter, we created our own by copying the cover for the in-location display in the photo. We expect to leave this display up for a week.
Promotion is vital since teen magazines are struggling at the moment.
Newsagents are billed for magazines supplied right up to the end of the month but the cut off for returns credits is usually between four and six days before the end of the month.
I heard from a newsagent yesterday about their frustration with Gordon & Gotch. They have a floating end of month cut off for returns and they do not let newsagents know the date. This denies newsagents the opportunity to better manage cash flow.
With the magazine supply to newsagents not declining in line with overall magazine sales decline, attention to cash flow management opportunities is mission critical to newsagents.
Magazine distributors must know about the situation – they see how many newsagent accounts are closing each month. Yet when they have a conversation with newsagents about the cash flow challenges of the magazine supply model they usually talk about it as if it is only a problem for the newsagent talking with them.
In one store, magazines from one distributor were cash flow negative for nine months out of the last twelve. This situation is unsustainable. The distributors can take action to resolve it but don’t.
I am concerned that the newsagency channel will reach a point where it collapses because of the expensive and challenged magazine supply model.
The inequity in the timing of accepting returns for credits in a month is just one example of many disadvantages newsagents face with the current model.
Our placement of Prevention magazine on the flat between Women’s Weekly and New Idea is working very well for us. I’d encourage newsagents to try this. While the title sells well from the health section, it is this high traffic tactical location placement which is driving excellent business for us.
If do you do try this, remember how many copies you place so that you can measure the success of the placement. Give it three or four days – if you are getting results keep doing it and if you are not try another title.
This is a perfect example of driving basket size. New Idea, Woman’s Day and other weeklies are the big traffic drivers, what you place on either side of them will drive the basket efficiency you achieve with them.
It is good to see that the latest issue of Good Food magazine is not sealed in a plastic bag as it has been for recent issues. This browser friendly version of the title is being promoted at two locations this week – with weeklies as well as in the food section. If space permits, we are likely to run a promotion at our newspaper stand over the weekend. Good Food is a good magazine at a good price point in a strong category.
We are promoting the latest Donna Hay magazine at our main sales counter this week. The stunning cover is attracting interest as is the free bag on offer as part of a newsXpress promotion.
We are also supporting Donna Hay with multi pocket placement in our food section as well as a single pocket placed with our women’s weeklies titles. This is the same approach we have used with success for Donna Hay for a while.
OfficeMax and Australia Post have done a deal whereby the Australia Post brand is being used to sell to launch an online office products store operated by OfficeMax.
This is a great leg up for OfficeMax as they can rely on the respected and proteected Australia Post brand to drive the business.
It is also another example of Australia Post leveraging its government ownership to take business from independent retailers like newsagents.
Sadly, the current and previous governments have not had the guts or desire to stand up to Australia Post and keep it focused on being a postal service rather than a commercial brand taking business from family run businesses like newsagencies.
If we were smart as a channel we would protest long and loud about this and fore the politicians to make a policy decision which stops Australia Post taking food off our tables.
News Limited is running a cafe subscription promotion unlike any I have seen in the newsagency channel. The number of titles per day varies by cafe. Even the days of week of the offer varies by cafe. This appears to be a very flexible subscription offer.
Some newsagents I have spoken with have seen full price sales migrate to the News Limited offer. Not only do they lose the full margin sales but they have to provide a higher cost delivery service.
I made contact last week with the three major politiccal parties to ask about small business interest and policies. Only the Greens have responded. They sent a copy of a media release from July 28, 2010:
Greens promote small businesses
Media Release | Spokesperson Bob Brown
Tuesday 27th July 2010, 12:00amAustralian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown today launched a suite of measures to assist small businesses.
The launch with ACT Greens Senate candidate Lin Hatfield-Dodds was at a restaurant in suburban Canberra.
Senator Brown said that small businesses were the power-house of employment in Australia, providing jobs for 5 million people.
Senator Brown is advocating a change to banking laws to help small businesses and flagged new opportunities in the energy efficiency and renewable energy industry.
“Our measures will help small business access credit, following the downturn in the global financial markets and promote new clean energy opportunities.
The Greens initiatives include:
- Legislation to require lenders to offer small business ‘fixed interest gap loans’ with an interest rate set at a negotiated margin above the lender’s cost of funds.
- Capped exit fees on loans to small business at the cost to the lender of the early termination.
- Support for the introduction of portable bank accounts to promote competition.
- Boosting the renewable energy efficiency with a national gross feed-in tariff to create new opportunities in the solar photovoltaic sector.
- An energy efficiency target that will create demand for energy efficiency certificates to be met by new small businesses conducting energy efficiency audits and upgrades in the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
“The Greens have a strong record in the Senate of supporting small business across a range of issues including anti-competitive pricing and superannuation,” said Senator Brown.
“The Greens will be a voice for small business in the Australian Senate in the face of the powerful lobby of large corporations and the mining industry.
I especially like the first two bullet points in their list. It is good to see a party actually talking about small business in the election campaign.
I love it when merchandisers visit and make a change without getting permission which impacts another publisher, a change for which they are probably paid a fee. Look at the photo and the hearder card inserted for Monument magazine.
The folks at ACP should check the photo carefully – maybe a call to the merchandising company is in order. They may listen to you.
The new issue of Home Beautiful went on sale yesterday we we decided on a display out the front of the store, facing into the mall. This is in addion to placement in with our interiors titles.
We were short of stock for a full display and, as the photo shows, added a column of Better Homes & Gardens and Burke’s Backyard – both titles which could reasonably be purchased with Home Beautiful.
One magazine which is responding well to promotion is Good Health. We have the display in the photo placed at the entrance to the women’s magazine aisle. This is what people see when they enter the aisle. This afternoon I saw the perfect example of this display working. A customer walked in, picked up a newspaper, walked toward the weeklies, noticed the display, browsed the title, picked up a weekly and then went back and picked up Good Health for purchase.
Watching customer behaviour is important in assessing interaction with displays. I want to see interaction and then measure sales. Without these the display is useless to me.
We are promoting the latest issue of Shop Til You Drop at exit of our women’s magazine aisle. While we have done the display, I am not so sure about the premium space allocation for this title. It does not respond all that well for displays in our store – not as well as other titles. There is only so much space and once you are done promoting what you are committed to for various reasons, it is a challenge to give space to titles you know you can lift. That said, we are giving Shop Til You Drop a go in a good spot because we understand the obligation.
I have created a short Twtpoll to gauge interest in small business policy in this election campaign. Click here to vote.
At the GNS Market Fairs in Melbourne and Sydney last weekend and this it was terrific to catch up with some smaller magazine publishers. We have an opportunity to work directly with smaller proactive publishers. That they are making the time to get to know the channel better by visiting our trade shows is encouraging.
We have sold out of Annette Sym’s Symply Too Good To be True 6 in several of my stores over the weekend. Hopefully we will have our replacement stock by Wednesday – we are taking orders (with a deposit of course). A $28.00 impulse purchase is a nice addition to any shopping basket!
We ordered extra stock yesterday and received it today. Well done Network Services!
Newsagents who early returned stock on Friday missed good sales this past weekend.
Star Trader, one of the classifieds newspapers to start up following the closure of the Trading Post is offering newsagents 100% commission for the copies sold in August. Then, from September until December, we get 50% commission.
Since we get Star Trader direct, the 50% commission flows to us. This makes it more attractive than classifieds titles which are supplied through newspaper publishers with whom we do not have direct supply arrangements.
We have upped our supply to give us capacity to more fully promote this title.
With four quilting related titles on the shelves from Universal Magazines at the same time and other titles also demanding space, something had to give. Our decision was to early return one of the Universal titles. Retail real estate is expensive, especially in shopping centre newsagencies. Titles with a shelf life of more than 30 days, regardless of the billing arrangements, need to come under focus as do titles from publishers who can flood a category and suck oxygen from other titles.
Giving our space for free to publishers, funding their cash flow requirements and paying to return stock which fails to sell is a very generous magazine distribution system. Our generosity ought to be met with some obligations.
Newsagents need to be able to control the titles they receive and the volume and to know that their decisions will be honoured for the long term.
At the GNS Market Fair in Sydney today and yesterday on the Tower Systems stand we had two iPads on show. One was showing how to use it in the newsagency and away from the newsagency for running the business. That was pretty cool to show off. The other iPad was for showing off the device itself, giving newsagents an insight into what it can do. I showed it accessing newspapers, magazines, websites, email and some very cool iPad apps. I also showed it it can be used to access to Tower Systems newsagent training videos and other resources. All in all an eye opener for many newsagents having their first intercation with the iPad.
“As for the iPad, there will be imitators, other people in the market soon, but I believe that is a game-changer altogether,” Mr Murdoch said. ”We will have young people reading newspapers, we’ll have different-looking types of newspapers, we’ve already got new sites from independent people at the moment. It’s a real game-changer in the presentation of news.”
That’s Rupert Murdoch speaking a few days ago speaking about News Corp’s latest results. The iPad is agame changer. Once the current price barrier is reduced it will become more of a game changer – I say that as a regular iPad user. Think back to the early days of the iPod, the price decline and the surge in uptake.
Annette Sym has let me know that she will be on Mornings with Kerri-Anne tomorrow promoting Symply Too Good To Be True 6. As we saw with Friday’s coverage of Annette Sym on Today Tonight, media coverage can drive excellent business. The key is to have the title in a location which drives impulse purchases. Click here to see our display for Symply Too Good To Be True 6.
In Sydney this weekend for the GNS Market Fair (which is terrific by the way) I was fortunate to have dinner last night at Souk In The City, a Moroccan restaurant in Surry Hills. Fortunate because the food and service were excellent and because I saw first hand the popularity of authentic Moroccan cuisine. The experience gave me plenty of ideas for how to promote ACP’s Moroccan cookbook – beyond the display we have already done.
Promoted well at impulse purchase locations, the Moroccan cookbook could do as well as the Slow Cooker cookbook in some stores. I an certainly seeing good sales in myy own stores.
My software company, Tower Systems, is showing off the latest newsagency software at the GNS Market Fair in Sydney this weekend. Tower already serves in excess of 700 newsagents in NSW/ACT.
In Melbourne, Tower is on show at the Home & Giving Fair, showing off our gift and homewares software. There are many newsagents attending this event – a few of us are meeting Monday for drinks.
The latest issue of Australia’s Open Gardens came out yesterday. We enjoy good success with this title – but not in the garden section where you would expect it to be located. No, we place it at the counter as well as with newspapers – as shown in the photo. In my experience watching this title over the years, most copies are purchased on impulse. This makes it tremendously valuable to us. It justifies placing the title in premium value high-traffic locations.
Watching someone pick up a weekend newspaper, browsing Australia’s Open Gardens and then adding it to the purchase is an absolute treat – that’s an additional $4.25 in margin dollars for the sale!
All of the effort by around 2,000 newsagents and newsagent software companies counts for nought when a magazine distributor ignores the sales data and ships stock without justification. Gordon & Gotch yesterday sent us more stock of Food & Exercise Diary and Calorie FAT & Carbohydrate Counter. We still had stock from the initial allocation by Gotch. The sales data they have in their computer system for our store would tell them this yet they sent us more stock and billed us.
I bet I am not along in receiving more stock of these two titles yesterday without justification. It would be good to know how much newsagent cash was sucked out of our businesses by this decision to send us stock without taking into account sales data.
Magazine distributors need to understand that they have an obligation to supply on a fair basis. Supplying when the sales data shows supply is not necessary is a blatant cash grab. Either that or the sales data we are sending is an absolute waste of time.
Yep, it’s been a frustrating week on the magazine distribution front.