We are promoting the Ultimate Wildlife partwork on the dance floor in a high traffic location toward the front of our Forest Hill store. We also have it in our wildlife section. At our Frankston store, it has been located on the counter between the two busiest sales positions. This price space focus is all about driving impulse purchases. It’s a good looking product. I hope sales are strong.
The questionable ethics of key people in the newsagency channel has been on show over the last couple of days as they have spread far and wide reports of winding up action which has been commenced against my software company, Tower Systems.
Rather than ask me if the report is true, they have been quick to send emails or make calls to spread their spin on the story.
Thankfully, some in the channel have called me. These are the ethical people, people who are want to know the facts of an issue before spreading gossip.
Yes, we have had a tax dispute with the State Revenue Office. We are not the first business to have this nor will we be the last. The issue is resolved. We’re busy installing systems and helping newsagents.
I am happy to take a call from anyone with concerns on 0418 321 338.
I am also happy to receive evidence of those spreading this story along with their spin.
UPDATE: (3:50pm) Someone calling themselves “concerned retailer” has mass emailed newsagents today trying to fan this story. It says something about their character that they would do this anonymously. I know who is behind the emails today as I have the email trail from Saturday night to selected newsagents.
Tower Systems is in a competitive marketplace and has caused some pain for others. It is to not a new experience that a misstep by the company is leveraged by others no matter whether their spin is inaccurate, slanderous or defamatory.
UPDATE: (9PM) POS Solutions has put a post on their blog asking for people to send them this email. From the evidence provided to me, they had the email on Saturday and forwarded it on. So, I am not sure why they are making a public show about asking to see a copy of the email they had two days ago.
UPDATE (Tuesday 7PM) POS Solutions is continuing spin on their website which is contrary to the evidence. As one industry association discovered today, the facts I have published here are true, the issue is over.
Newspaper publisher Fairfax is bundling newspaper iPad apps with weekend home delivery of print newspapers. Check out the Fairfax press release here. I am not sure that this is a smart move but I’d expect that they have done their research.
Thinking about this purely as an iPad user for the moment, this idea seems ridiculous to me. Forcing me to get a print product to get access on my iPad. No thanks. I’ll get my news elsewhere – like the ABC or The Australian – or both.
Forcing me to get the print product is like, well, being forced to use a medium which I have moved on from. The print subscription is something else I have to worry about. With my iPad I take it everywhere whereas with the home delivery, I would have to remember to stop and start when I am away – I wanted to get away from all that by moving to the iPad.
The price is the other issue. $18 a month? What are they smoking?
No, I can’t see much upside in linking the iPad to a print edition.
Now, from a newsagent’s perspective … cheers Fairfax! Smart move connecting the old technology product to the new technology. It maintains a feeling of relevance for me and my print centric business. That will make me feel good and worry less about change bring brought about by technology.
Seriously, I don’ think this is a smart move from Fairfax but the market response will be more important than mine.
Newsagents reading this should not take any comfort from the Fairfax move. Change is here, on our doorstep. Publishers will do what they need to do for their future. We should do the same in our newsagencies every day. No supplier is going to put our needs ahead of theirs, nor should they.
At our Frankston store, the discounted bundle of Woman’s Day and Recipes+ which was provided by ACP Magazines last week sold out within a day. At Forest Hill, 80% of the sales were achieved between Friday and Sunday.
We treated the offer differently in each store. At Frankston, it was promoted in a high traffic location whereas at Forest Hill it was placed in two pockets at the top of the column of Woman’s Day stock.
My preference with offers like this is to ensure that the core high traffic product comes first – hence my decision to display it is such a way as to not disrupt the bulk of our sales at Forest Hill. I don’t want to train our high volume customers, Monday to Wednesday customers, to expect bundled (discounted) magazines regularly. That said, almost selling out from our passive display is a surprise and welcome.
Our sales of Australian Property Investor magazine are in a slump. Indeed, the last issue saw only a 20% sell-through. This is despite prime positioning in our property and business category and time in one of the pockets above newspapers. The publication itself looks good. I suspect that the sales slump is more a reflection of the market and economic conditions generally.
As the week unfolds we trim the waterfall of New Idea and Woman’s Day, but usually leaving the flat stack in place. Recently, we have taken to using the flat stack space to promote a book which will appeal to shoppers browsing the weekly magazines. This is working for us.
While we have always blended book offers in relevant magazine categories, we have not done this in our weekly space because of space constraints. By engaging in this tactical move Friday through Sunday we are attracting some book sales we might have otherwise missed.
I choose the titles carefully – hence the Heath Ledger book placed below New Idea.
The credit card scam which I blogged about on July 9, has hit more newsagents. A couple of days ago, a newsagency in a Melbourne bayside suburb was hit and is facing a loss of more than $2,000.
There scam is the same – they use credit card numbers to buy mobile phone recharge and to load prepaid debit cards. They say they have forgotten their card but have the number in their mobile phone. They usually purchase multiple mobile recharge coupons. In the most recent case they said it was for employee rewards.
If someone is buying many, more than three, mobile recharge vouchers at once, be suspicious.
Here is a repeat of the advice I blogged two weeks ago:
You could also:
The incident last week involved a male. Another, a couple of months ago involved a female.
These people are exceptionally good.
The Age is reporting that a criminal investigation into Bill Express executives is under way thanks to evidence gathered in the recent liquidators hearings.
While there will be no economic joy for newsagents from this, those who feel ripped off by the whole Bill Express saga will derive some comfort that those in control of the company are being pursued.
We received the Beckett 2010 World Cup Guide in store on Friday, long after the last goal of the 2010 World Cup had been kicked. Gotch should never have sent out this title. Sure there will be some die-hard fans who will want it as a souvenir but I doubt sales will be enough to justify the cash-flow cost to newsagents. I would have given the title a go had I received it two months ago. We received three copies at $21.95 each. I broke with my own rule and early returned them all. I am not prepared to have $60 worth of out of date stock sitting on my shelf when I have more current and fairly priced stock available. And while on the price, this magazine sells for $9.99 in the US. How do we get to $21.95 here given the current exchange rate. Surely freight cannot be that much.
We are finding that Jamie magazine, the food magazine built around Jamie Oliver, works best as an impulse item in each of my newsagencies. While we run the title in our food category, it actually works best when located in a pocket in the middle of our weekly titles – as shown in the photo. Here, it is purchased on impulse, extending the shopping basket and driving good value for the business.
We have tried Jamie with newspapers, at the counter and even in a food display at the front of the store. It is in with weeklies where it works best – for us.
We have placed Men’s Health on a stand just in front of AFL card albums at one of our sales counters. This placement for the weekend is tactical because of the number of men we have shopping with their kids and buying AFL cards. Money magazine did okay here following the same strategy.
we know that Men’s Health sells well when promoted with newspapers. We wanted to discover other locations where it can work as an impulse purchase. We also have a good display in the usual location for the magazine.
We are promoting APC magazine with an in-location display. This display confronts everyone entering our men’s magazine aisle. This is next to the location we use to promote The Monthly. That display had to come down as we sold all but one copy in a couple of weeks.
APC is struggling like most computer titles. It is well browsed but the conversion rate to sales is lower than other titles in the aisle. I’d note that this is my feeling and it is not based on accurate measurement.
We plan (hope) to leave the display up for a week at least.
Flipboard is an iPad app which provides a digital magazine like experience on the iPad based on social media content. It has taken the world by storm in just a few days, so much so that the developers are struggling to keep up with demand.
Flipboard is disruptive to print media beyond it being an iPad app. It relies on everyday people for content from sites like facebook and Twitter. Check out the promotional video and see how it works.
We returned all stock of Gameinformer magazine earlier this week after keeping it on the shelf for the full on-sale period. As I mentioned in my blog post last month, this title is not working well for us yet Network Services increased our supply. There was no justification in our sales numbers yet they decided to spend our money. And magazine distributors wonder why newsagents get angry and why paying the bill on time is such a challenge.
What I want is a magazine distribution model where I can choose the titles I want and the quantity I want to receive. I suspect that if I had this, my magazine sales would grow – I’d carry a wider range of titles and more stock of titles which work for me.
Instead we have a magazine distribution model which is not based on sales – despite what some on the disribution side say.
Smart publishers would try and tap into the growing pool of newsagents who want more control over magazine supply so that they can grow magazine sales. We are out there people – come and find us because we can help you grow your business too.
We received Monarch magazine at our Forest Hill store this week for the first time. I was surprised since this is a magazine which according to the publishers: commemorates the lifestyle of affluent African American Professionals. I have owned Forest Hill for fourteen years and cannot recall seeing that many African American customers shopping with us. What would possess Gordon and Gotch to send us three copies? Certainly nothing in our sales data for other titles. Supply to us was plain dumb! It wasted my time and money.
Publishers with more relevant stock vying for time and attention in Australian newsagencies ought to be as frustrated as me by this story.
As a rule, I do not early return stock the day it arrives but I did with Monarch magazine.
Warrick Hosking at newsXpress Gympie was at it again yesterday. This time he was cooking Moroccan food from the ACP Moroccan cookbook. In Warrick’s own words, here is how the day went:
We had an absolute blast today and that came with great results. Cooked Tagine lamb and sweet prunes in the morning and Spicy prawns with tomato tagine in the arvo. The smell wofting out into the street put our cafe next door to shame.
Sold 18 AWW Moroccan and 11 or 12 AWW Slow Cookers. Even the food I cooked looked like in the pictures. This has never happened before. Handed out around 50 little plates out and our customers loved it.
This exercise may cost a few dollars but the consumer confidence and customer loyalty it builds is fantastic.
I would encourage everyone to try this, newsagents cant say it wont work because I have done it twice now with great results.
newsXpress Gympie is competing with seven other newsagencies in town. Warrick understands about competition.
Not everyone can cook in-store. In our Frankston store in the Bayside Shopping Centre we have some challenges with this. It has not stopped the team selling more than 200 copies of the ACP Slow Cooker cookbook. This amazing result has been driven by simple tactical placement of the product – in high traffic locations to drive impulse purchase.
So, whether it is an in-store cooking display or tactical placement of product to drive impulse purchases, there are excellent sales out there which newsagents can snare to extend the shopping basket.
Our display of cookbooks (in the photo on a re-purposed Darrell Lea stand) , strategically placed to confront shoppers heading to our main newspaper stand, is working very well. What we have left is a fraction of the cookbook range we started with a few weeks ago.
This is the second location for these books. As they sell down further they will move again.
Given that the food segment is outperforming all other magazine segments, we are taking the opportunity to promote a range of food titles out the front of our store. You can see from the photo that we are using well-known brands across the top of the display and the Annette Sym Symply Too Good titles down one side – to draw people to the display.
Thsi display is not about creating a pretty billboard. rather, it is designed to drive impulse purchases – it is passed by the majority of our lottery customers.
By promoting range we are reinforcing our point of difference over other magazine retailers nearby.
We will leave the display up until Monday – unless there is demand for the space with Friday’s magazines.
We are promoting Better Homes & Gardens at the counter for the next few days – until Monday. The simple display is mounted on a piece of slat-wall covering one of our computers. We also have a full waterfall in with home and living titles as well as two pockets atop our weekly magazines. Better Homes & Gardens continues to be a stand-out title while many other titles are experiencing tough times.
Once Better Homes comes off the counter display we will shift to an in-location display. Then, we will move to a display with newspapers. All of this movement generates excellent sales.
It is beanie season in newsagencies across Australian. Right now we have four magazines bagged with a free beanie. While I like a beanie as a gift, it is not so special when it is available with four different titles. It would be good to see more creativity with gifts supplied with magazines.
We are ignoring the opportunity to be rewarded for a pretty display and instead are running with a tactical placement of the latest issue of Australian Good Taste at a busy counter point. I expect this will work far better for us than a billboard type display elseweher in-store. We are checking numbers so we know how many we sell from this counter position versus the stock in ur food section.
I was fortunate to meet with Adam Gray, General Manager of Fairfax Media Publication Solutions and Damien Wouda, National Account Manager of FMPS, today to discuss the transition from NDD to Fairfax. I did this as owner of Tower Systems, a Director of newsXpress and as a newsagent. They are meeting many people in the newsagency channel to canvass the best approach to further establishing their magazine distribution business.
I appreciated and enjoyed the questions they asked and the openness of the discussion.
Today’s meeting was not about conclusions. I am not about to publish here the details of the discussions since it is the decisions they ultimately make which will matter.
I cannot recall a magazine distributor demonstrating the level of genuine interest in options that I experienced today.
From a press release from Amazon yesterday…
the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.
While there is plenty of discussion online about the Amazon spin (See David Carnoy’s article at CNet for balance), there is no denying that they are experiencing healthy numbers.
We are using an in-location display to promote the latest issue of Women’s Health. We also have a couple of pockets of the title above our women’s weeklies titles. Women’s Health is the most recognisable title in this segment – the simple display not only promotes the magazine but also the broader segment – it is worth giving up four pockets for this.
We are promoting Cleo magazine at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle. This display uses the ACP basket builder stand – dressed especially for Cleo. I am thinking that it is time we moved this stand from this location – it has been situated here for months. While the displays look good, customers get used to an offer always being here. Promotional displays work best when they disrupt traffic.