The card sticking out of the new issue of Delicious magazine is crumpled and torn with several copies, making the magazine look damaged when it is not. Publishers sending magazines with cards sticking out like this ought to box them to ensure that they arrive in-store in a merchantable condition.
We will probably remove the cards because in their present form they will not help sales as intended.
Newsagents may want to check out supply of 30 Luxury Homes from Universal Magazines which arrived in-store in Wednesday. Our supply in one store doubled. While I’d accept an increase because the last issue sold out, doubling is too much without our permission – especially given that it has a six month on-sale. The smarter move if such a bump is forecast would be to send an initial allocation and a second allocation a couple of months in if sales warrant. The current approach makes me the banker for the publisher, even with delayed billing.
I am meeting with several independent magazine publishers over the next couple of weeks to talk about the relationship between their business and newsagents. The discussions will be informal and aimed at mutual understanding. They are not commercial negotiations. These meetings have come about because of contact through this blog.
As recent moves by the publisher of Australian Traveller have shown, dialogue can lead to better commercial terms for newsagents and better outcomes for publishers.
Newsagents and good independent publishers have a lot in common. We need each other too – they provide our point of difference and we provide a cheap distribution channel. I say good independent publishers because not all can wear this label. The best publishers are those who are honest about print run size, circulation achievement and how they commercially engage with newsagents.
The more publishers I talk with the more I discover that there are considerable differences between publishers. All we see in our shops are the magazines and sometimes it is not clear which titles are from which publisher, making it hard to assess the impact of their supply model and new title launch schedule.
Jost Stollmann, the CEO of Tyro (fast broadband eftpos), wrote to software companies which integrate their software with the Tyro eftpos solution about the recent reports of fraud using eftpos terminals. I publish Jost’s note here in full as it provides excellent information of value to newsagents.
Tyro is better than a bank terminal since it is integrated with newsagent software. You don’t have to key in the transaction value. Approvals are processed in under two seconds usually. As Jost notes, security is considerably enhanced over the old technology terminals you probably have today:
In recent press you may have seen headlines alerting Australians of a card payment scam that was discovered in a West Australian multinational fast-food restaurant chain. Something like 3,500 customers seem to have been defrauded by $4 million. What about your merchants? Are they exposed without knowing?
This is a check list for their peace of mind that I sent them:
1. Have your acquirer guarantee that his terminals are PCI PED and EMV 4.0 certified! All Tyro terminals are. They are the newest generation protected against eavesdropping, tampering or message forgery. All sensitive information is protected, and instantly erased if the terminal is tampered with.
2. Have your acquirer guarantee that no card holder data passes on to any PC, for instance residing in memory in the clear! With Tyro’s integration technology, no card or PIN data is ever passed on. It never reaches your Point of Sale (POS) software. Therefore, even if malicious data capture software was to be loaded onto your POS, it would not be possible to capture, store or transmit confidential card data.
3. Have your acquirer guarantee that card holder data is never transmitted in the clear! With Tyro’s technology, any transmission occurs only encrypted through an-end-to-end secured connection between our PCI PED certified terminal and our PCI DSS compliant switch, and it is using totally safely the public internet.
Sorry, if this sounds a little like bragging on about ourselves, but we are dead serious. The reality is that most EFTPOS terminals transmit card data in the clear. Integrated EFTPOS solutions hold card data in memory in the clear. We think it is most important to protect merchants and card holders against the increasingly sophisticated fraud industry. It is also important to maintain the consumers trust in the card payment industry.
Tyro is the only new entrant into the Australian payment industry. We are leading the industry in security. So, if you want to protect your merchants and their customers from card data security breach, possible scheme fines and potentially catastrophic reputation damage to their business and to the industry, recommend Tyro to them. If you are not yet integrated with us, what are you waiting for. If you are help us spread the word and recommend us to your customers. Thank you for your consideration.
Tyro is integarted with newsagency software from Tower Systems and POS Solutions. Over 300 newsagents have switched from old technology slow bank terminals to Tyro. They are saving time, cutting mistakes and saving money – in addition to enjoying better security.
Disclosure: Tower Systems receives a small clip from trabsactions through Tyro, this funds support and link development.
I hope Shane Warne does get the gig to host Top Gear and that it moves from SBS to Nine. A good TV show promoting a good magazine drives traffic to newsagencies. Top Gear would certainly benefit from the support. Look at the tremendous success of the Better Homes and Gardens TV show / magazine tie in and the weekend sales achieved as a result of the Friday night show.
US magazine publisher Conde Nast is introducing a slick platform for selling and displaying its titles’ print issues on the iPhone and iPod Touch. These will sell in from the app store for US$2.99 starting with the December issue of GQ. Advertising Age has more.
Coles is quietly playing with a newsagency model within its supermarkets as a visit to Coles Bayswater (VIC) last month showed. There, inside the supermarket and close to a newsagency, is a Paper shop – as the signs label the area.
While there is plenty to criticise about the model I saw, there is enough to it to raise concerns. This is Coles playing and I suspect that they have only just started. My understanding is that they have people with UK experience in this space working with them.
UK supermarkets ASDA and Tesco both successfully introduced newsagency like formats into their supermarkets years ago. There have been studies done on the considerable impact on high street shops in the UK, including newsagencies, of the march of supermarkets into the independent retail realm. High Street Britain 2015 is one such report. I first blogged about this in January 2006.
It is not only newsagents at risk if Coles and others get this model right. All publishers would suffer. The bigger publishers would give up more margin because of the higher cost of selling a copy of a magazine in a major supermarket compared to the cost of selling it in a newsagency. Independent publishers would suffer because they could not afford to be represented in supermarkets and there would be fewer newsagencies through which to sell their product.
While there is a risk in studying the competition in too much detail, newsagents ought to inform themselves about the work Coles is clearly undertaking. If they get the model right in terms of range, service and community connection, the impact on newsagents could be devastating. Especially considering the likely impact of disruption from devices such as the Kindle and similar technology when they get that right.
My visit to Coles Bayswater was a wake-up call, a call to action for newsagents to work on their businesses to meet this new challenge, to step up to the plate and be ready for Coles (and Woolworths) to get their paper shop model right.
Newsagents will ignore this at their peril.
I am working on what I saw at Coles on a number of fronts but I’ll save writing about that for another time.
We did not receive our magazines from NDD yesterday. It seems the truck went missing and everyone on our run was affected. While we found out the truck was missing early in the day, after a call, we did not have NDD magazines by the end of the day.
Thankfully, this does not happen often but when it does the knock-on impact is considerable to sales and the roster.
This week’s Melbourne Observer heralds the start of Andre Rieu season. For two years, Rieu has been responsible for driving excellent sales of the Melbourne Observer, Limelight and DVDs. He is the perfect cover story for the over 50s demographic in my part of the world at least but has been missing from the cover of magazines and newspapers since his last tour. What makes his a good cover subject is that he appeals to men and women.
Newsagents might want to check their shelves for titles with a Halloween theme like this US cooking title and the ACP cookbook for Halloween themed parties. Halloween is a good opportunity to place magazine titles covering the season together – titles from different segments and which would not usually be placed together.
Connecting similarly themed titles in this way reinforces the magazine specialisation of newsagents. We should chase such opportunities.
Network Services has advised that effective 1st November, they will no longer be accepting or crediting paper Supplementary Return forms. This includes any old paper template forms and POS printouts. This is the next step in the modernisation of the newsagency channel, a project near to our hearts as it helps newsagents cut time out of the operation of their business. All Supplementary returns are to be submitted by one of two ways – XChangeIT LINK or NETonline.
Network Services has indicated that all returns will be online by 1st December. Click here for a copy of the SupplyNET October newsletter.
Newsagents switching to the latest software can cut paperwork, speed up returns credits, reduce mistakes and achieve a more balanced supply. I have seen newsagents cut between fifteen and twnety man hours a month from their back office operation when switching to the new standards. This is a net saving to the business of $4,000 annually.
While there is a considerable operational benefit to the magazine distributors of the latest IT moves, there is also a significant benefit to newsagents.
As Halloween is getting closer, the team at Forest Hill has created a brilliant display at the front of the store which connects our range of Halloween products with the newsXpress collateral and the Saturday Tattslotto draw for which Tattersalls has provided excellent collateral.
Moving seasons like Halloween is an important part of a fresh retail strategy.
The masthead of The Age newspaper suffers from an ad for Michelin stuck over part of it today. Just a bit to the right and it would cover the name of the newspaper. It is sad to see a good newspaper treated such a shabby way.
Some newsagents appear to be lost when it comes to handling the award changes which apply soon and which I have covered previously here. There are new regulatory obligations on us which will take time and money to address. Smart newsagents are getting appropriate advice and establishing necessary procedures and paperwork to esnure that they meet the requirements. Others are “leaving it for now”.
The smart approach for newsagents is to engage with a party to have all of the necessary paperwork, procedures and staff training provided professionally. The changes are too complex to navigate yourself along with running a newsagency. The ANF is running roadshows around the country educating newsagents. The QNF is also doing roadshows and providing practical assistance. Here’s a summary of QNF activity:
QNF have developed a ‘calculator’ which shows the extra cost the Modern Awards will bring to newsagents over the 5 year transition period. This helps for some to understand the severity and others are able to re-arrange staffing to ensure the impact is minimal.
QNF have engaged an I/R specialist to draw up EBA’s for individual newsagents and also had dealings with the SDA who are offering a free EBA to Qld newsagents (one multi employer agreement).
We are presently doing roadshows all over Qld informing newsagents the up-to-date information on the Modern Awards.
The differences between the State & Federal Awards and the impact on each as well as Delivery Drivers, casual staff vs permanent part time, the use of contractors.
QNF started all of this early this year and are confident that they have kept newsagents informed all along the way.
Time is running out for those who wish to do an EBA. The end of this month just about sees it in as it is a 6 week process and it must be finished by 31st Dec.
For more details on the overall changes, check out Fair Work Australia.
We are engaging with the brand extension strategies of ACP Magazines as evidenced by our placement of Your Body next to Good Health next to each other last week.
We have seen this work well with the Woman’s Day puzzle magazine and with Better Basics from Pacific Magazines’ Better Homes and Gardens.
Our job in retail is to place the extension with the associated product. Hopefully, the products do the rest.
The challenge with Your Body is that it is entering an already crowded space. We have a good range of magazines which serve this niche, titles such as Women’s Health, Wellbeing and the recently released Prevention. To add to an already full range means we need to crimp space from other titles.
While publishers will act in ways which suit their businesses, newsagents need to act in whay which suit theirs. We are the only stakeholders in the Australian magazine business with a whole of category interest.
The Magazine Publisher’s of America Magazine Innovation Summit last week opened with a video, “Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines.” While there are difference between the US magazine marketplace and ours, this is worth watching. I like that it’s upbeat.
Thanks to mediabistro for the link.
I have heard from several newsagents that they are experiencing supply problems with the Tractor partwork which was launched in June. If you are having trouble with supply of Tractors, please let me know. I want to understand the scope of the problem and help if I can.
Newsagents are the front line on partworks and if we cannot supply it affects our reputation with our customers. Publishers, importers and distributors need to understand the cost to our businesses of problems in their supply chain.
Many of us take on putaway orders for partworks in good faith. Inability to honour a commitment on this jeopardises business worth upwards of ten thousand dollars a year for many.
I do not accept the response of it has been more successful than we expected or the publisher has a supply problem. These excuses are useless when you are facing an irate customer with whom you have a contract to supply.
My experience is that partwork supply is good overall. All it takes, however, is a problem such as we appear to be having now with Tractors for the world to collapse and you left wondering if partworks are worth the hassle.
I wish someone would accept responsibility and apologise for the mess.
The photo shows our permanent partworks display. This is in addition to feature space allocated toward the front of the shop for recent releases. As the display shows, we are committed.
I don’t often price compare with other businesses nearby because I don’t see price as a differentiating factor. That said, on the weekend I checked out the prices charged by Cardeaux for their Halloween product. They are charging between 33% and 50% more than us for exactly the same Halloween merchandise. Talk about frightening people for Halloween. Of course, we are letting our team know because shoppers go to Cardeaux thinking they are cheap.
The other difference in Halloween at Cardeaux and our newsagency is range. We have five or six times their range. We are finding that customers buy multiple items at once.
We are promoting InStyle at the front of the newsagency this week. It is a classy looking issue and comes with a free designer bag and deserves the front of shop treatment. This is a display right on our lease line to attract passers-by. We will leave it here until the weekend. We also have a full waterfall display in the body of the shop.
The e-reader market is hotting up thanks to several recent announcements. While we are considerably behind the US and Europe here in Australia, the pace of change will increase once the Kindle arrives here in numbers.
We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health magazine next to our main newspaper stand. We are using the side of a Duracell batteries stand and a small wire magazine stand to hold the stock. This ‘found’ space works well for the right title – one which appeals to the newspaper customer. I expect Men’s Health to work well here.
I like this display because it shows what can be done when space is limited. The proof, of course, will be shown in sales.
My earlier comments about this week’s chunky New Idea notwithstanding, we have it on display at our main counter, between our two busiest registers. I expect it to work well for us. The recipe base is a good value gift.
We will leave New Idea up in this location until Wednesday if we have sufficient stock.
We are promoting the latest issue of Cleo at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle this week. We also have the title in its usual location further into the aisle. Cleo is not a huge seller for us and our supply quantity is small – the length of time of this co-location will be determined by early sales.
On the location itself, this has been working very well recently: Good Food last week and Good Health the week before benefited from the prime position.
New Idea is chunky this week with the free sachet from Master Foods recipe base. While I understand the preference of the advertiser, I’d prefer to give the gift away from behind the counter and thereby not damage the presentation of the magazine.
Like other newsagents I am sure, we have had to store half supplied stock in the back room.
We are two weeks into our new card relay at our newsXpress Forest Hill store and early indications are good. Hallmark has introduced new product into the mix and adjusted pocket numbers for some segments.
Hallmark has 75% of allocated space. The total space allocation has not changed but the mix within this certainly has. We have replaced the remaining 25% allocated to For Arts Sake with counter and lifestyle cards from Henderson Greetings. The scope of change is significant.
It has been more three years since we made any moved on card range so these changes were long overdue. That it had been left this long was a mistake we will not repeat.
We will look at performance on a quarterly basis with the card companies and tweak as we go based on their data and ours.
Each card, like every stock item in a newsagency or any retail business, must earn its right to stay. To break even on real-estate costs, we need a stock turn from the card department of 3.5 times a year.