The counter display we did for Good Taste magazine worked a treat – we sold ten copies in two days. The other ten copies we were short suppliers will not arrive until next week – too late for us. had NDD continued its Friday deliveries we would have suppoirted the sale through the weekend and sold double what we achieved in two days. Ugh!
I wish newspaper publishers in Australia supported the over the counter subscription system like the have in the UK. Read how these subscriptions operate with The Guardian:
How does Guardian and Observer Subscriber work?
The subscription scheme is based on a voucher system. We will send you personalised, dated vouchers for each day of your package. You simply detach the appropriately dated voucher and hand it to your retailer as payment for your copy of the Guardian or Observer. You will receive a new set of dated vouchers every three months. Your retailer will be fully reimbursed for the full price of your newspaper.Where are my Guardian and Observer vouchers accepted?
Most local newsagents, major supermarkets and petrol stations will accept your subscription vouchers as payment for your Guardian and Observer newspaper. If you have a problem using your voucher then please contact us on 0845 1204733 9am to 5pm seven days a week. Calls charged at local rateMy local newsagent already delivers my papers. Can I still subscribe and benefit from the saving?
Yes you can. If your local newsagent already delivers your papers to your home, simply hand your Guardian and Observer Subscriber vouchers for the relevant month to your retailer and these will be put towards your bill. Please note that you will need to arrange home delivery of your papers directly with your newsagent who may charge you for this service. Home delivery is not part of the Subscriber scheme.
While I am sure there would be some bumps with implementation, something along the lines of what The Guardian offers would drive sales more days of the week. I have pitched this several times over the last few years and failed. Maybe others here, if they like the idea, could pitch it to their publisher contacts.
The photo below shows how the team at a newsagency I was in yesterday are using the feature space between their newspaper display on the left and the start of the magazine display on the right. The Easter gifts display stands out.
While the magazine and newspaper fixturing on either side is inflexible, the gift area fixturing is flexible and allows for a professional looking display. The keys with this high-traffic feature space are to tell a compelling story and to change the story regularly.
Often I go into newsagencies and see feature space like this populated with dust covered products which look like they have been there for months. No wonder they are covered in dust.
Country Style from News Magazines sells well for us so it is odd that our supply has been cut so much so that we will sell less than usual. Now we have to try and find out if this is a News Magazines decision of a decision by the distributor.
Some magazine supply decisions don’t make sense.
SPOTTED.mobi, a mobile magazine rack, has been launched for the iPhone. It aggregates the top 20 headlines from a selection of magazines. Click on the headline and you’re taken to the story. Headlines are updated hourly.
I suspect publishers pay to be on so there is a limit to the titles. Still, it’s another reason to not need the print product.
I don’t want to read this on the blog … This is for you and not for the blog … Just don’t blog about it … Off the record means off the blog.
These are just some of the statements which have preceeded meetings I take and phonecalls I receive since this blog really started attracting traffic (currently an average of 1,450 visits a day). Some people think that I blog anything I hear or am told. I don’t. These people don’t know me that well. Early in my blogging I found the Bloggers Code of Ethics at CyberJournalist and have tried to blog to those standards since.
I am told many things by newsagents, suppliers and others connected with the channel. I have a good sense of when someone tells me something hoping it will lead to a blog post. I tend to ignore these situations unless I think it would be genuinely inetresting or useful.
I and some colleagues are doing a magazine relay today (when I land back in Melbourne from Sydney) for a newsagent, to reinvent their magazine offer. We have been planning the relay for a week (off and on), considering sales data, demographics, the MPA magazine layout recommendations and gut feel.
As should happen with magazine relays, we are going into this with the view that what we do today is not a destination – no magazine re-location should be considered to be this. Indeed, it is about change, change and more change. This keeps the offer fresh and ensures it continues to improve.
The layout of magazines needs to be assessed in each newsagency at least annually. By assessed, I mean reviewed physically and through magazine performance reports. The category responds well to change – there is commercial value in playing with the layout based on what customers are buying and looking for.
Three newspapers in Michigan (USA) are cutting their daily print editions to publishing only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Another Michigan daily is closing altogether. read more here.
These moves are opportunities for newsagents who want to embrace change rather than react to it.
Congratulations to NANA for a good night last night at their Newsagent of the Year Awards.
Congratulations and kudos too to the stars of the evening – Van Nguyen Tuan Tra of Wincamden Newsagency for winning the Distribution Newsagent of the Year Award and Allen and Brenda Kavanagh of Greenhills Newsagency for winning Retail Newsagent of the Year award.
More than 160 people attended the event – a show of tremendous support for the work of NANA.
The photo shows the businesses which financially supported the Awards dinner. This includes my own Tower Systems. I mention the sponsors because the suppliers supporting newsagent events demonstrate, financially, their commitment to the channel – support them.
The value of the free block of chocolate bagged with the latest issue of Australian Natural Health which came out yesterday has not survived the distribution process well. The packaging of every block Scraborough Fair organic blameless chocolate in my shop looks damaged. These giveaways are only valuable if they look good to the consumer in-store. We considered featuring this title but could not find any worthy of the prime space.
Silicon Chip magazine this month comes with an advertising catalogue which is four times the thickness of the magazine itself. This creates a retail space challenge for newsagents without any financial benefit.
At the very least the publisher should pay newsagents for the addditional space required to handle this fat magazine package.
We are chasing the bonus margin on this month’s Popular Science by promoting it in its usual place – men’s lifestyle – as well as next to our main newspaper stand. If we achieve a greater than 50% sell-through, our margin for Popular Science goes from 25% to 35%. extra margin focuses the mind of retailers. If only this was a long term arrangement – reward for additional effort would see newsagents act more proactively for the titles involved.
We are promoting the Woolworths branded Good Taste magazine at our prime counter position for the next few days because of the free magnetic shopping list which comes with the title. Our feeling is that Good Taste will sell well from this location – hence the display between our two busiest registers and the call to action on the pad – Buy Me!
With a title like Good Taste being promoted heavily elsewhere, it makes sense for us to try and sell out early in the cycle.
The latest issue of the Australian Women’s Weekly went on sale today and while we received stock, we received one folded poster to support the title. The Souvenir Edition will appeal to our customers so we have created a cover based display at the front of the shop. This would have looked so much better had we received professional marketing collateral commensurate with the status of this issue.
The new annual access pricing announced by XchangeIT, the company owned by the three magazine distributors and through which newsagents receive electronic invoice data and provide sales data, at the QNF conference yesterday of $695 for users of the POS Solutions DOS software, $895 for non compliant newsagents and $495 for compliant newsagents is a step in the right direction but not far enough if they want to drive compliance among newsagents. Access for compliant newsagents should be free or, at least, token in cost. Only this will focus the minds of newsagents on the value of compliance. It is important to demonstrate the value to the channel of the many newsagents committed to efficiency and the cost of those who are not.
NANA, the Association representing newsagents in NSW and the ACT has called upon newsagents to not participate in any petition to the state government about NSW lotteries. Click here for a copy of the notice sent by NANA to newsagents.
Here are the suppliers who funded the QNF Queensland Newsagent State Conference the event yesterday.
As one who regularly supports such events through newsXpress and Tower Systems, it is frustrating that it is the same suppliers who stump up cash for newsagent conferences, golf days and the like. The best way newsagents can encourage more suppliers to open their wallets is to support the suppliers who fund industry events.
I am grateful to have had an opportunity to speak at the QNF Queensland Newsagents State Conference today. I spoke on Living with Google – how we need to operate our newsagencies in this Google dominated world where the traditional business rules have been abandoned and our core products are challenged. I see our response to the changed world in simple terms:
I met several people at the QNF Conference who are excited to be pushing the boundaries of their newsagencies. They have every right to be excited.
The biggest challenge we have as a channel is the gap emerging between the newsagents changing their businesses and those who do not understand that change is essential.
We are getting good comments from customers shopping the new speciality card fixturing at our Sophie Randall shop at Toorak. Click on the image for a larger copy. We continue to play with product location within the fixturing – constant change works well for sales because of the regular customers who love cards. I’d note this is our feature wall – separate from our everyday and lifestyle cards.
I have been contemplating the future of newsagencies in the context of the GEC (Global Economic Crisis) ahead of my speech today to the Queensland Newsagents State Conference. I’ve been reading plenty about the GEC and the likely impact on businesses like ours, about how retailers traded through the Great Depression and other tough economic cycles.
I am optimistic. If we are smart, newsagents have a bright future. The GEC is an opportunity for us, an opportunity to celebrate being small, local (Australian) and flexible.
Of course, if we do nothing then we become spectators of the passing opportunity.
We will get more from our businesses if we engage and participate in the GEC.
We are seeing excellent results from each part of our stationery department which has been planagrammed. Among the best results are those we are achieving around the 3M brands. Not only does the display look stunning, it is appreciated by our customers – as reflected in sales. Planagrams are easy to implement and can be done without outside involvement: block vertically, by brand within category. The goal is to make a bold visual statement and it make shopping easier.
While it is frustrating that the Telstra Next G ad covers half the front page of The Age newspaper today, I like that it does not interfere with the masthead. That said, the Telstra ad makes it difficult for people who buy the newspaper based on the lead story. Who want’s to buy an ad?
There are some things which should never be distributed with magaiznes – like the tub of green goop with K-Zone magazine which arrived this morning. While the goop, which looks like alien droppings, lifts off, it is an early morning challenge we’d have been better off without.
The shame News Limited newspapers brought upon themselves this past week over the Pauline Hanson nude photos not only reflects poorly on their mastheads but on all newspapers.
Consumers rely on newspapers to check the facts. Newspapers, in criticising new news mediums such as blogs and social media websites, say it is only their rescources which can produce news which consumers can trust.
In publishing the photos last week and spinning the story for seven days, News Limited showed how poor they can be at the job which they say is the point of difference of their medium.
Nude photos of Pauline Hanson taken by a boyfriend decades ago should never have been considered news. That they were fake demonstrates how far the publisher has strayed from their mission.