We are promoting the latest issue of Good Food magazine on the back of an ACP magazines basket builder stand. This display faces customers as they leave our stationery aisles. We also have the magazine in a pocket in the food coulmn with our women’s magazines and in our regular food title area. Good Food has done well for us – hence the co-location approach. We want to get our sales early in the on-sale period.
While I should be pleased that a competitor has been closed for four days, I am not. Tenants in shopping centres rely on each other to do their bit draw traffic to their part of the centre. The government owned Australia Post outlet opposite one of my newsagencies has been closed since Christmas Eve. This hurts our traffic. It also makes shoppers angry and some take this out on nearby shops they visit.
If Australia Post sees itself as a mainstream retailer (and not a public service) it ought to start acting like one.
Buoyed by the success we have had with Men’s Health and Women’s Health in this small ‘created’ display space next to our main newspaper stand, we decided to try the latest issue of Top Gear Australia there. We will track sales from this locations compared to sales from the main location for the title.
My sense is that Top Gear Australia will work in this location because it is not a planned purchase for many customers. While I have no evidence with which to back this claim, it is an opinion developed watching how shoppers interact with the title. They don’t seek out the title but happily pick it up if it interrupts their destination purchase.
I know the display is not overly attractive. It has certainly worked for other titles recently. The posters while not completely readable, do promote the brand.
We will leave Top Gear here for a week before deciding our next move.
We are tapping into the feeling of over-indulgence at Christmas with a simple display at the counter promoting a mix of diet and exercise products. While not the best looking display, it has generated impulse business and that’s what it is there for. We will give this display four to five days in this prime position – longer is the sales justify the space.
We created the display initially as an experiment to see if this mix would work here and because the space was free for a few days.
The Guardian newspaper in the UK has just launched an iPhone app for a one-off fee of £2.39. Here’s a promotional video showing how it works.
Newsagents need to factor these developments into their thinking about their own future model.
We fully embraced the Melbourne Boxing Day Sales season in all of our newsagencies. Sales yesterday and today have been excellent, just under 10% ahead on last year (on a same store basis) but ahead nevertheless.
We are discounting all Christmas products by 50%. A third of the Christmas stock on sale was purchased specifically for the sale. We also purchased calendars, gifts and some stationery items at heavily discounted prices to give us good bulk for the Boxing Day Sale – these are at varying levels of discount.
We are using the Boxing Day Sale to show off the diversity of products we sell – this is essential given the new traffic generated by the sales. We want these people thinking of us more for gifts and other non newsagency traditional lines we offer. Our participation in the sales also helps combat the feeling among shoppers that newsagencies are expensive.
We follow the approach of the majors and start on the morning of December 26 with all Christmas decorations down and with product lined up to reflect deals – i.e. no pretty displays. This is about value shopping where the price is more the hero than the product itself.
Core to our sale offer is our range of boxed Christmas cards. We have been in this space for years and are known for having an excellent range before Christmas as well as after. It is great to see power card shoppers back in over the last couple of days hunting for their bargains. Our sales in the week after Christmas will come close to matching sales in the week before – with most at 50% margin or better.
We make more money out of our Boxing Day Sale than we used to make from Back To School. This says something about our demographic. It also says something about our ability to buy for the Boxing Day Sale and achieve an excellent good margin.
Our Boxing Day Sale will run for a week before we modify it into a summer sale for two weeks.
Amazon has announced that they sold more Kindle books than physical books on Christmas Day. That’s amazing! Those who said the Kindle would not take off here in Australia will be eating their words soon – there are now 390,000 books available for the Kindle. On top of that, the new platform makes it easier for authors to get their work published.
Once Australians get the taste for e-reading and as new generation devices are released physical retailers will feel an impact.
We experienced a greater pre-Christmas magazine sales spike in the four days before Christmas this year than in previous years. Magazines for men were particularly popular as gifts as were special interest titles.
Compared to a regular week, the pre-Christmas lift we see in the week prior is traditionaly around 50% – more this year.
We facilitated growth in the pre-Christmas magazine sales with a merchandising strategy which included well thought out displays as well as co-location of titles which we thought would work well as Christmas gifts.
Organisers have sold well this Christmas. Birthday card organisers, gardening organisers, recipe organisers. We brought in the K TWO range late in the Christmas season and sold most of the stock in just over a week. We thought the higher price point might be a barrier in our newsagencies (we have the same range in our gift shops where price is less of an issue). Price was not an issue in our newsagencies. The experience is a reminder that we can sell a broader range of product and higher price point product than we expect in newsagencies.
We played with plenty of new products this Christmas. Most worked, some did not. It’s all part of the experience not only of newsagencies but retail in general – we must keep evolving our businesses. The best change is that which we drive for ourselves.
A common question I get from visitors to this blog is where can newsagents find these new products. Go to the gift fairs. Join the GHA – $200 a year connects you with a whole new world of suppliers. It is only by trying new items that you can see how far you can push the boundaries of products sold in your newsagency.
The success with the K TWO organisers shows that we can carry higher priced social stationery type items, especially for gift giving seasons. They worked in diverse locations such as Frankston and Forest Hill as well as in the heart of Melbourne.
UK newspaper publisher KOS Media announced a Christmas gift yesterday with the launch of a free Apple iPhone app accessing their newspapers via the iPhone. They claim this is a world first.
Christmas Day, and we hope you’re all having the best possible time with friends, family and loved ones.
But here’s some fantastic news – your day has just got even better. KOS Media has developed its own app for the amazing Apple iPhone.
With the Kent News App, you can read all of our news, reviews, features and sport in the palm of you hand, watch our videos and hunt for a new job, look for a new house and find cars for sale.
This is a world first and means you can see all of our newspapers exactly as they are printed direct to your iPhone or iPod Touch – and it costs you nothing.
Pages turn, just like a traditional newspaper and you can zoom in on stories.
This is the bigger challenge for newsagents, that publishers will find the right device / payment channel which works better for them than print. I don’t think it’s the iPhone but every reader they migrate is someone else on the journey with them to whatever the mobile digital future is.
I’m aware of three new newsagency locations available through my involvement with newsXpress. One each in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Each is a greenfield shopping centre based location set to open early in 2010. If you know of anyone interested in opening a next-generation newsagency, please pass on my details: 0418 321 338.
One of our landlords wrote to all retailers in major centre yesterday reminding us that we need to stay open until 10pm. Their note talked about how traffic this Christmas is up on last Christmas.
The government owned Australia Post shop opposite my newsasgency closed at 5pm as usual. Their lack of support fellow retailers is appalling.
We were fortunate to pick up some Hallmark Christmas Ornaments last week. These are usually sold at Target stores. The reaction from customers has been amazing. What has been most interesting is the strong word of mouth. Within a day of us putting up our display we had customers coming on asking for the ornaments – having been told about the range by a friend. Most sales involve at least two ornaments and several other items.
The trial this year encourages us to build a strong collectible ornament story for Christmas 2010.
I like ornaments as a category because they are habit based. They fit with calendars, diaries and many other items we sell in our newsagencies.
The simple Christmas greeting in receipts printed by our Point of Sale software has been geting a good response from our customers.
We are also using the message / coupon facility to promote magazine putaways to magazine customers and a diary reminder (for next year) for diary customers.
Amazon is running their usual and amazing last-minute magazine sale offering year-long subscriptions for a fraction of the already discounted subscription price. For example: Good Housekeeping – 66 cents a copy; Southern Living – 38 cents a copy; and, Bazaar- 67 cents a copy.
We are promoting the latest issue of Australian Women’s Weekly in the front of the newsagency. In the first day of sale, yesterday, we achieved a double digit lift on last year. We will leave this display up until early next week. It is good to have collateral with which to promote a title so close to Christmas. Most other publishers seem to think that we don’t need material with which to promote their titles this time of the year.
The Scrapbook Series: BSA demonstrates the importance of special interest titles to our businesses. We have achieved a 66% sell-through in three weeks. For a $20 title this is good. I knew it would sell well based on sales of classic motorcycle titles. The challenge is getting the right special interest titles which fit with successful categories. the scale out algorithms used by magazine distributors don’t always work. I am sure there are titles in their mix which I could sell and which their systems don’t flag for us. There needs to be a way I can easily select new titles without running the risk of opening the floodgates for titles which will not sell.
This is a problem with the push magazine distribution system. Those of us newsagents who want to be magazine specialists cannot create the businesses we want.
Last month’s Mindfood magazine had Michelle Obama on the cover. We were sent four times usual supply. The latest issue came out yesterday and supply has been adjusted back. Sales of the Michelle Obama issue were double usual sales. Michelle does have pull when it comes to selling magazines.
The federal government established an expert panel to consider issues arising out of the Government response to the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into unconscionable conduct. The QNF and NANA made a submission to this panel. Click here to see a copy of their submission.
In the submission, they list conduct which newsagents regularly experience. This list will resonate with newsagents:
Newsagents should read the submission in full and see first-hand the work of associations robustly representing newsagents.
Avenues we and other small businesses can take are determined by legislation. This expert panel is advising a Senate Committee on matters which have the potential to impact our future. The work by NANA and QNF is most useful for newsagents and other small businesses.
The new moon board game based on the movie from the Twilight series has been selling very well. This is a new category for us and we wondered if it would work – especially with the major retailers going so hard on this product. We have done well by having the game in a good location and supported by professional merchandising and external marketing. We were tempted to discount to match the K-Mart price but have found that this is not necessary. Not all of our customers shop at K-Mart.
Jocelyn Y. Stewart has written a heart-warming piece in The Los Angeles Times about newspaper carriers and experiences she recalls about her dad who was a newspaper carrier in the US for 25 years. Newsagents, distribution newsagents especially, will enjoy what Jocelyn has written.
Click on Paper Cuts Out of Print and see the daily newspapers in the US which closed down this year. Each black dot on the map is a newspaper which closed. Now, un-tick the 2009 box at the bottom of the map and click on 2008 and then 2007. See the trend.
Alan Mutter (a veteran media executive) has written an insightful blog post about the closures and the state of play of newspapers in the US. I urge you to read this.
While there are differences in our newspaper model here in Australia compared to the US, the fundamental challenges are the same.
The Australian Newsagents’ Federation (ANF) issued a bulletin last night about the meeting in Adelaide on Friday organised by two proactive newsagents to discuss the new News Limited contracts. Click here to see a copy.
The ANF bulletin does not reasonably represent the debate around the representation of newsagents on the new contracts. The state ANF representative talked with pride about the good relationship between the ANF and News Limited. He said that the increase in delivery fees for country newsagents was a good outcome negotiated by the ANF.
Several newsagents challenged the ANF view of the increased delivery fees. They asked if the ANF had put various scenarios in the negotiations – including what happens when someone moves from a two day delivery to a heavily discounted seven day delivery. The ANF acknowledged that it had not explored this in the negotiations. The anger in the room was palpable.
While around two thirds of newsagents indicated they were ANF members, the vote which should have been taken is whether the newsagents at the meeting were happy with the ANF handling of the negotiations. I am told that a close to unanimous vote of NO would have been delivered.
This is a problem for the ANF. SA newsagents are most unhappy and demonstrated this by organising their own meeting and attending in unprecedented numbers. This unhappiness goes back to early ANF endorsement of the home delivery customer migration project – a News Limited initiative which seeks to shift management of home delivery accounts from newsagents to News Limited – risking traffic in retail newsagencies and driving a reduction in home delivery penetration. The ANF endorsed migration without consultation with the newsagents set to be affected.
The ANF bulletin reiterates that they have authorisation to negotiate on behalf of newsagents. Any properly consitiuted body can achieve authorisation. The key for newsagents is that they are represented by people who listen to their situation and negotiate robustly on their behalf.
Click here to see my report of the meeting of SA newsagents last Friday.
Around 200 newsagents are yet to migrate to the new XchangeIT Link EDI platform. These newsagents face not receiving electronic invoices from January 1. They also facxe slower returns credits and other operational challenges. With more than 2,500 newsagents already migrated, getting these remaining few would be good for the channel.
Newsagents who have migrated are set to have access to some excellent business initiatives in 2010.
I received two titles yesterday from Gordon & Gotch which should not be sent to newsagents unless explicitly requested. Body Art 3 and It Happened to Me are fringe titles. They are expensive – $24.95, have a long on-sale and deliver magazine margin for book products. Gotch should know better. If distributors want to use my shelves in this way then they need to develop a different model which takes all the risk. Let me pay on scanned sales only. Give me free returns freight. Oh, and pay me for the use of my shelves.
There is bound to be an excuse, there always is. In the meantime, from the moment the titles land on my doorstep, I am responsible. No wonder newsagents get angry.
Magazine distributors often say that newsagents complain, make mistakes and are late at getting things done. If we did not have to put up with stuff like this maybe we’d have more time to work on our business.
I expect better from Gordon & Gotch.