We received the latest issue of National Geographic yesterday morning with a stunning photo of the Mount St Helens volcano. What surprised me is that I had seen this same issue at a newsagency at Sydney airport on Tuesday of last week. This is why I am wondering when the latest issue of National geographic comes out?
We are giving the latest issue of That’s Life prime position at the counter to promote the new look for the magazine. We created this display yesterday and it will stay in place until Friday, maybe longer depending on sales and stock. We had some good titles yesterday from which to choose for this prime space and selected That’s Life on the basis of existing good sales – I have found that it is easier to grow sales off a good base.
That’s Life and its competitor Take 5 are important to newsagents. They are the two magazines most likely to be purchased together. They generate excellent mid-week traffic. We need them to be strong – hence our support for the facelift for That’s Life. We will do the same for Take 5.
We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health and Women’s Health at the end of our two busiest magazine aisles. This feature display went up Monday and will remain in place for a week. From there is the promotion will move to another location. We also have displays of each title in their usual respective locations.
Intralot has started appointing scratchie-only outlets in a move which is sure to upset newsagents who paid a considerable fee for the right these and other Intralot products.
In one situation of which I am aware, Intralot has placed scratchies in an IGA supermarket less than 1km from from a newsagency.
While I am all for competition, I am concerned about this move as it dilutes the position I and plenty of newsagents paid a premium for.
Sales for the ACP’s Women’s Weekly Slow Cooker cookbook continue to amaze me. This has to be one of the stand -successes of 2010 so far. While the sales have been excellent in a broad variety of newsagencies for which I have seen sales data, it is that many sales are as a result of impulse purchases that makes the numbers all the more enjoyable.
It is a delight to see a newspaper customer extend their $1.10 purchase to over $14.00 when they add a copy of the Slow Cooker cookbook to their purchase.
Most of our own sales of the title have been on impulse. This is why we continue to promote the Women’s Weekly Slow Cooker cookbook at the counter and next to our weekly magazines. While we have it in with our cookbooks, we don’t sell many from here. Indeed, the stock in the cookbook section is raided to keep the impulse locations serviced.
This is a title which defies assumptions about shoppers in different areas. My newsagency in Frankston, for example, has earned more than $1,000 from this title. They could have achieved more had we had the stock. We had no idea it would be such a success in Frankston but once we realised the opportunity we leveraged it for all it was worth.
It is with a title like this that newsagents can demonstrate their value to publishers. We can tap into early obvious customer interest and make the title an impulse success. Supermarkets, slated to get the title soon, will only leverage the impulse opportunity this if they are paid to give the title prime space. I’d love to see ACP keep the title in newsagencies so that more of us can make excellent money from this nice little earner.
One of team members at newsXpress Knox created this display promoting the launch issue of The Battles of World War II partwork and a several books which should appeal to the same customers we currently have on sale. The display is proving to be more valuable than display the partwork by itself. This is the second time we have moved this partwork – it’s all part of a commitment to chasing / embracing change. With so many regular customers visiting newsagencies, it is only natural that they become store blind.
We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health magazine at our main newspaper stand because we know it will work here. The last two issues have done well for us by being promoted in the simple stand with newspapers. This is one of three locations for Men’s Health this week.
Men’s Health leads the segment, it’s a well known brand – so it makes sense to place it in a high traffic area of the newsagency. This display in front of our newspaper stand will remain up for at least a week.
Only 365 the December 2009 Men of the Year issue of GQ sold for the iPad. Mashable as the report. I am surprised. I expected to see numbers at ten or fifteen times this as people experiment with content on the iPad. While I am not sure what the low number means I doubt it means trouble for the new iPad channel.
It’s tough for magazine retailers in the US with most sales coming from subscriptions. I wonder how publishers do it. Look at Amzon at the moment. There they are oiffering magazines for under a dollar an issue. Fort example: Time: 33 cents an issue; Marie Claire: 29 cents an issue.
While there are good online deals here in Australia, none are as bloody as what’s running at Amazon at the moment.
The release date for an iPad app for The Australian has been announced – May 28. It will cost $4.99 monthly. I’ll be signing up as I embrace the iPad as an alternative channel to print. I’m keen to see how this compares other newspaper iPad apps, especially how they handle news as it evolves through the day.
The website for The Monthly indicates that they will launch an iPad / iPhone app shortly. Announcements from Australian publishers on iPad apps have been slower than I expected.
Thanks to consistent external marketing, competitive pricing and tight range management, ink sales now account for mroe that 50% of stationery sales in two of my newsagencies. Plenty of other newsagents are telling me it is the same in their businesses.
Ink achieves this with only 15% of stationery floor space and around the same in overall stock investment. While the overall margin is slightly lower than stationery, stock turn is considerably higher as is average sale value – making the small margin sacrifice well worth it.
The new traffic being generated by ink is terrific since enough ink customers buy other items.
I expect ink sales as a percentage of stationery to continue to grow.
We are promoting some of the British titles we carry in a promotional display in the mall at the front of our newsagency. As the photo shows, I have gone for well known brands in the top two pockets – following the principles of beacon branding.
I like to take a break from billboard type displays promoting one title and to use the break to promote range. I am sure that people will walk past and notice a title they know and come in and browse as a result.
Shoppers make assumptions about the products they will find in a newsagency. We perpetuate this by promoting titles in our windows and toward the front of our shops which they see elsewhere. I have found value in changing this up every so often to show depth of range which may be unique in your area.
Within a couple of hours of putting the Woman’s Day Sweet Treats title at the counter yesterday we had our first sale. I knew would work well. The sponge looks delicious and the price point makes for an easy impulse purchase decision.
We treat our counter with respect when deciding what to display and for how long. We are completely selfish in our choices. Products which we think will sell easily get priority. While this infuriates some suppliers, it is the only way – we pay the rent after all.
We are brutal with our choices. If a product does not deliver results in a couple of days then it is gone from the counter. I suspect that Sweet Treats will stay for a week at least as I can see many of our customers buying the title. The last big success we had in this location was That’s Life Reader’s Recipes.
Margaret Simons writing at Crikey.com.au today provides an excellent perspective on the Bruce Guthrie case against News Limited in the Victorian Supreme Court which was decided last week in Guthrie’s favour. Andrew Crook writing last Friday at Crikey provided excellent coverage of the judgement.
Bruce Guthrie dared to take on News and pursue his rights. While he won, you wouldn’t know it if you read News Limited newspapers on the weekend. In the court of public opinion, publishers all too often act as prosecutor, judge and jury. A publisher concerned about publishing news would have played it straight down the line and reported the facts of the judgement.
Some of the behaviour attributed to senior News Limited personnel and presented as evidence in the case will be familiar to some newsagents. There are occasions when the newsagent publisher relationship is very one-sided. Newsagents don’t have the resources or balls to take on such a large company.
Hopefully one outcome of Bruce Guthrie’s court case is that more people will take on bigger opponents in all areas of business in pursuit of justice.
We are promoting the latest issue of InStyle magazine with one of our simple yet effective in-location displays. We will leave this up for a week and follow with a display elsewhere. As I noted with Cleo (see previous post) InStyle sells through the month.
We are promoting the latest issue of Cleo to shoppers as they leave our busiest magazine aisle this week. This display will remain up for a week and then will move to an in-location display for the title. Our experience is that Cleo sells through the month and not so much in the first week so it makes sense to promote the title beyond the on-sale week.
Network Services sent us 20 copies of Cook Fast, a cookbook published under the Weight Watchers brand (not connected with the Australin Weight Watchers magazine). I questioned the supply at the time as we did not have any space for this unexpected arrival.
Last week, we took all 20 copies off the shelf having actively promoted the title at the counter and with newspapers as well as in with food titles. Not one copy sold.
In addition to having to pay to process the returns, we had to find the retail real estate, the labour creating displays and the cash given the model of paying for all stock supplied and then claiming a credit for returns.
We need a model which offers fair compensation for titles which do not achieve a minimum sell-through rate. I’d suggest a 50% sell-through is fair. Titles which achieve less than this should be paying their way. I would have some exceptions such as selected Australian small publisher titles we want to support for diversity of range.
Cook Fast looks like a cheap magazine, made up of material repurposed from elsewhere. While this may not be the case, it is what it looks like to me and I am a food magazine consumer. It does not have the quality of the AWW cookbooks which sell for $3.00 less.
If I had been given the courtesy of being asked whether I wanted the title I would have said yes to three or four copies, enough to fill a pocket. Since I was not given this courtesy and the title failed abysmally, someone needs to be financially accountable. Since my relationship is with network Services, I blame them.
To send twenty copies at a time when newsagents are being loaded with new and reissued food titles is poor behaviour by Network Services. While I am sure they will have an excuse, I won’t buy it. They have an obligation to treat newsagents fairly, with respect. The supply model for Cook Fast, based on my own experience, did not respect newsagents at all.
As I have written here many times previously, newsagents need a magazine czar, someone who controls what titles get access to our national retail network. Magazine distributors get it wrong too often and newsagents end up paying the price.
So I have written my piece and I feel a little better. Nothing will change. Newsagents will blame distributors. Distributors will blame newsagents and publishers. No one accepts responsibility for the failure of a title. Well, actually, that’s not true. Newsagents accept responsibility because they are contractually bound to do so. This is the unfairness of the current Australian magazine distribution model.
There, now I feel better.
The Australian is today reporting that News magazines will reprint around 15% of the initial print run of the launch issue of Master Chef magazine to meet demand. I have heard of strong sales over the weekend from several newsagents with whom I have had contact.
We had to change our Soccer International Magazine’s World Cup 2010 program counter display on Saturday due to its success. Sales from the counter and our sports magazine section have been excellent.
While we are chasing more stock, we added two more titles to fill the counter display.
World Cup titles have taken off in the last week. We will be chasing more stock to tide us through the next three weeks in the lead up to the competition.
The World Cup is an opportunity beyond magazine sales – smart newsagents are selling supporter collateral and branded merchandise.
Master Chef magazine has really taken off at our newsXpress Watergardens store. We were able to increase initial supply to 30 copies. We sold out in three days adn thankfully received 50 more on Friday. As of yesterday afternoon, we had 1 copy left. That is 49 copies sold in less than two days. key to the success is the high impact visual merchandising by our store manager Renee.
While it is early days for the title, it could be that Master Chef magazine is a good weekend title. I’d like that. We have built good business around Better Homes & Gardens as a weekend title. The mroe reasons we can pull people into newsagencies or build baskets on the weekend the better.
Last night’s $20 million lottery superdraw did very well for us, better than we had expected. Inidividual ticket and syndicate sales were strong. I think that the success had to do with the lack of other jackpots around the superdraw.
What I found most interesting is the success in over the counter up-sell. Mentioning the $20 million first division prize pool led to good impulse purchases.
Those who read the first quarter 2010 newsagency sales benchmark numbers I published here last month would not be surprised by the audit figures released for newspapers and magazines for the for the same period. The audit numbers confirm the accuracy of the benchmark data for magazines. The newspaper numbers in the audit are worse than I saw in the benchmark study. This could reflect greater volatility in channels outside newsagencies. It could also reflect the need for a bigger sample for newspaper sales analysis.
While the numbers are poor for magazines, declines in sales for most, the sales decline for Take 5 and That’s Life are particularly concerning since they underpin traffic on a Wednesday. I am pleased to see that Pacific Magazines is launching a revamped That’s Life next week. Both titles need innovation to drive sales. Given the sales of UK magazines in this space I see potential for new titles too.
The newspaper audit numbers are dreadful with only small upside for The Mercury, The Sunday Tasmanian and The Sunday Age. My personal view is that news is what sells newspapers. Too many newspapers have strayed from news.
Reasons for the decline aside, the newspaper numbers serve as an important reminder to newsagents that we need to evolve our model to rely less on newspaper traffic. It is vitally important that we build new traffic generators. It’s up to us, not suppliers, to build our relevance.
Newsagents have had to allocate considerably more space for Golf Digest this month thanks to the free magazine bagged with the current issue. Where we could usully display our supply in one pocket, this month we need two. That is double the retail real estate. Do magazine publishers think that this space is waiting to be allocated? Do they wonder how we can make the 100% increase in space requirements work? I doubt that it is given any thought at all. If they had to pay for the space allocation they would think twice.
What do I want here? Respect from a publisher when they double the space requirement. It probably comes down to money. If they double the thickness of a title they either pay to take extra space or increase the margin significantly. This is what other retailers would expect.
We are giving Gardening Australia a push with an in-location display in our gardening section. Even though this issue has been out a few days we decided to give it a push for the weekend as this is when we tend to sell more copies. Space permitting, we will maintain this promotion for a week. A benefit of these simple displays is that they are easy to setup and move – so we get more flexibility when we need it.