A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Free local newspaper for Victorian bushfire areas

phoenix.jpgA free local newspaper. The Phoenix, covering Victoria’s Bushfire affected areas has been launched by the company behind the Melbourne Observer newspaper. The Phoenix will be primarily distributed through newsagencies in fire affected areas including Nillumbik, Whittlesea, Murrindindi, Mitchell and Yarra Ranges – 100 outlets in all.  Once again newsagents are playing an important community role.

Each issue of The Phoenix will carry free advertising listings businesses in the bushfire affected areas. The Melbourne Observer office is providing free backup support for calls and faxes in addition to underwriting production costs.

The Phoenix is a terrific initiative for the newsagents in bushfire affected areas and the wider community.

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Newsagency opportunities

Losing university students

I understand that newspaper publishers want to educate university students to read newspapers.  They also want to drive circulation.  $20 for a year’s subscription for a university student – including home delivery on weekends – is an amazing deal.  These offers are from publishers who refuse small business newsagents even the smallest cost of living increase.  The two issues are related.  You cannot discount your product by 97% to grow circulation and then pay less than minimum wage to newsagent to fulfill part of the service.

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newspaper home delivery

Displaying Easter Eggs

sr_mc_choc.JPGClick on the image to see a larger version of the Chocolatier Easter Egg display our team has created at our Sophie Randall Melbourne Central store. Customers entering the store are greeted with this table. We experiment at our Sophie stores with fixtures and display concepts with a view to using these in our newsagencies. The table we have used for the Easter Egg display works well in newsagencies.

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confectionary

Online Training Academy for newsagents launched

My software company, Tower Systems, formally launched its online Training Academy for newsagents today.  This is an exciting move for us and for newsagents – guaranteeing a on-goinging training opportunities which will help produce better outcomes for newsagents, their customers and their suppliers.

Free online Training Academy for newsagents and newsagent staff

MELBOURNE – March 10, 2009 — Tower Systems, Australia’s largest supplier of retail management software to newsagents has launched a free online Training Academy for newsagents.

Through the Training Academy, newsagents can access formal training designed to help them better compete in today’s environment.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for newsagents and further demonstrates the leadership of Tower Systems to its community of 1,500+ newsagents.

Fully interactive, participants learn from each other and the workshop leader – as if are in the one room – even though they can be at home or their shop. Questions are answered and live examples provided to create a professional learning experience. Each session ends with a test to gauge what has been learned and the value of the experience.

Tower Systems provides access to all training for free. There is no limit to how many workshops newsagents and their staff participate in.

“Anyone can train you about what button to press and when, this is different. We train you about the why, we help you genuinely save time and make more money.” commented Mark Fletcher, Managing Director of Tower Systems. “Training like this, months and years after you install our software, helps you unlock tremendous value from the relationship with us.”

The online program includes training on magazine management, stock control, point of sale, stock take and how to move from POS Solutions to Tower Systems.

The online training services are in addition to Tower Systems’ group and one-on-one training sessions which are delivered around the country.

Access to the Tower Training Academy is from any computer with broadband. A phone is used for toll-free audio participation.

The Tower Training Academy is part of the exclusive Tower Advantage TM initiative.

Tower Systems serves in excess of 1,500 newsagents with retail management and home delivery software. It serves more newsagents than all other software companies combined. Tower owns and operates three newsagencies – it uses its software itself and provides test facilities for supplier initiatives.

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Customer Service

Discounting magazines

wool_mags.JPGWoolworths is offering Woman’s Day and NW magazine for $2.00 off if purchased together in a catalogue promotion which has newsagents concerned.  Discounting these popular weekly magazines in this way risks resetting consumer expectation in relation to price of these titles and other weeklies.  Newsagents are not well positioned to compete if magazines go the way of other supermarket such as soft drinks and breakfast cereals which are always on special somewhere.

Discounting like this with the majors, if continued, diminishes the value of the newsagency channel – where 50% of magazines are sold.  The last position publishers want is to be more reliant on supermarkets than newsagents for sales.  This is what they risk if campaigns such as this one featuring Woman’s Day and NW take off.

While we run a loyalty program for magazines in our newsagencies, this is a whole of category offer and pursues genuine incremental growth  rather than shifting a purchase from one retail channel to another.

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magazines

Promoting Women’s Health and other magazines

fhn_w_health.JPGWe are promoting a range of health magazines with a feature of Women’s Health at the front of our newsagency. The display in the photo is right on our lease line, in easy view of passers-by.

Our sales data shows that Women’s Health sells well in the first on-sale week so it’s appropriate that we give it prominence this week. The approach we have taken is in line with what I have been writing here recently – that we want to feature other titles with the feature title. This improves the chance of a more efficient shopping basket and demonstrates to browsers that our newsagency has more than the featured magazine of offer ion this category.

Visual merchandising aficionados will see that we are blocking vertically – except for the Annette Sym Weight Loss Journals at the lower right side.

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magazines

Print at home newspapers

MediaNews Group in the US is planning on releasing a print at home personalised newspaper offer according to a report yesterday at PaidContent.  Apparently, the company plans to sell or rent special printers with which customers would print personalised copies of the newspaper.  The project focuses on cutting the most expensive costs from the current newspaper model – printing and distribution.  The New York Times has more on this story.  Of course, we have had this flexibility online for years.

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magazine distribution

Promoting The Cat Collection

fhn_cat_partworks.JPGWe have high hopes for The Cat Collection partworks which came out today.  We arranged to get plenty of stock, expecting that this partwork will be popular with our customers.  We have a display at the corner of our counter, between our two lottery selling points – a good location for impulse purchase.

2009 will see fewer partwork launches than 2008 according to the partworks experts so getting a titles which will be successful is more important – hence our high hopes for The Cat Collection.

Partworks are more successful for newsagents than your average magazine in that a partwork customer is 33% more likely to purchase other items in-store according to our basket data studies.  The other benefit of partworks is the putaway opportunity.  Putaway customers are loyal and a good partwork will bring them back regularly.

We will maintain our promotion of the launch issue of  for two weeks and hope to get convert many sales to putaway commitments.

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magazines

Obama magazine sells well

obamamag.JPGHistorical Collector’s Edition featuring Barack Obama sold 66% of allocation at our newsagency compared to the 0% sell-through for the Sarah Palin edition.  I thought the high cover price ($21.50) might be a turn-off.  Clearly not.  It will be interesting to see how long the Obamas can drive magazine sales – I noticed that Oprah is sharing her cover for the first time with a photo of her and Michelle Obama on the cover of O magazine  in the US.

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magazines

Coffee gaining attention

images.jpgCoffee is emerging as the new category to try among rural, regional and even high street newsagents. I know of several who are now selling coffee – from automatic machines through to the full on barista model. Since newsagents are open early, coffee makes sense. The keys, from the people I have spoken with and who are having success with coffee, appear to be: provide a good product, fast service and a fair price.

The biggest challenge appears to be around managing labour resources given that coffee is more labour intensive at the counter than selling newspapers and magazines and given that newsagency customers tend to be impatient.. The excellent margin on coffee makes funding additional resources easier.

I have heard of one misstep where the newsagent went with lower quality coffee and equipment. It was not until quality was improved that business picked up.

Coffee fits with the early morning strategy I blogged about recently. This strategy was shared with me by a follow newsagent who has made some very smart moves in his business by embracing change.

Coffee is not easy to try in a shopping centre – mainly because of the permitted use clause. It is something I would seek to have permitted if I had the necessary space and the newsagency was in the right location in the centre. If I had a newsagency in a high traffic location and already did good business in the morning I’d be trying coffee right away. That and some pre-packaged good quality muffins and the like. This would be an easy move. Machines can be rented and good baristas employed casually (if you go for the full-on personally made model) for a trial period if you are unsure.

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retail

Selling sport magazines

cricketmags.JPGSports magazines perform very differently between newsagencies from the data I see.  Cricket magazines, for example, perform poorly in my Forest Hill shop while Golf, Soccer and AFL titles perform well.  Since many are small volume titles, they need careful management at the distributor end.  Unfortunately this is not always the case and newsagents end up over-serviced in one sport and under-serviced in another.

Since magazine distributors act in isolation, it is a challenge for them to adequately manage the category for newsagents.  While it is impractical, sharing data, even category data, between distributors could lead to more equitable distribution for newsagents. Outside of the Trade Practices Act issues with this, I suspect that such sharing may not be in the commercial interests of the distributors.

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magazine distribution

Promoting St Patrick’s Day

picture-010.jpgBrett and Alexandra Carey at newsXpress Deception Bay have put their Bill Express screen to excellent use promoting St Patrick’s Day a day whic usually passes quickly. Promoting it early may mean more than some extra copies of the Irish Echo.

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retail

How about this for a magazine promotion?

Would it be cheeky offering a discount off a Puzzler crossword if a Lovatts title is purchased? What about offering a customer buying marie claire a discount off the cover price of Cleo? Or a discount off Who if someone buys OK!? In each case, the original purchase is intact and the special offer added to the basket.

Woolworths in Queensland is currently promoting a deal where you can get NW and Woman’s Day for $6.95.  My idea is more about promoting across publishers and even across product catgeories – but with publishers and other suppliers financially supporting the promotion.

Newsagencies have many single item sales. Petrol outlets are the same and they address this through their counter offers. While these are frustrating, that they continue to be pitched demonstrates that they work.

We could do the same thing but in a smart way. A publisher could make an offer to newsagents to pitch their product if a competitive title was purchased. Given that we could only have one of these running at any one time, it could be a valuable new sales driver for newsagents.

We could even play with this approach and offer a discount off Woman’s Day if a customer purchases a lottery ticket.

Newsagencies have excellent traffic. We ought to consider leveraging that by breaking with tradition. If it works for petrol it may work for us. There is a win for our customers with a special offer, a win for the supplier selling more product and a win for us thanks to what should be a good back end deal meaning we make what we would have made.

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magazines

Being the heart of the community

Newsagents who see their businesses as being important and connected to the local community ought to check out My Shop Is Your Shop.  The My Shop Is Your Shop – Local And Proud Of It campaign was established in 2004 in support of a campaign promoting independent retailers in the UK.  It focuses effort around National Independents’ Day. The brilliant website is packed with excellent resources which community-connected newsagents could adpot for use here in Australian.

Everything about the My Shop Is Your Shop campaign connectswith newsagents and how we see ourselves in the community.

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Customer Service

Can newsagents sell the Country Collections Diary in March?

We received stock of the 2009 Country Collections Diary from Network Services in my newsagencies on Wednesday this week.  I was surprised, so was the publisher, Universal Magazines, when I contacted them.  While they have investigated and resolved the issue for my newsagencies, they have not, yet,  addressed the issue in other newsagencies.  I have encouraged Universal Magazines this week to:

  1. Publicly acknowledge the problem.
  2. Tell all newsagents to return the diary in their next returns cycle.
  3. Advise the distributor to immediately credit all stock pending reconciliation with newsagent returns.
  4. Communicate this to newsagents through various forms urgently.

I am not happy that I have been taken care of as this issue is not about my businesses.  This issue is reflective of systemic behaviour by distributors and, to some extent, publishers.  The solution needs to be systemic.

Too often, our suppliers fix problems for noisy newsagents yet continue the bad behaviour with the majority of newsagents who are not noisy.

Fixing the Country Collections Diary problem in my newsagencies does not help the channel and it is the channel I care about more than my three newsagencies.

This is why I am blogging about it this morning.  Universal Magazines needs to understand that the distribution system which abused newsagents with supply of the diary this week is the problem.  They need to urgently fix this so that I can trust commitments they have med to me in recent times.

UPDATE (9/3/09): Universal has gained agreement form Network to recall these diaries this week.  This is an excelleent outcome.

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magazine distribution

Promoting healthy Easter gifts

fhn_easter_09_1.JPGWe are pitching a healthy Easter range in our newsagencies with a good range of plush and other Easter related gift lines.  We have the display at the end of our dance floor, in a high-visibility area.  The Easter stock will be moved a couple of times as the season unfolds – change is crucial in driving gift and related sales.

While we will still have the Darrell Lea range, it is these calorie-free items which we think will sell well early in the Easter season.

I have seen sales data from around fifty newsagencies recently comparing Easter 2008 to Easter 2007.  More than half the newsagencies delivered double digit growth.  While the base in most cases was low, growth is growth.  This demonstrates that with some effort in-store, Easter can drive growth.

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Gifts

Integrating the magazine display

We are working in creating smarter, integrated, promotional magazine displays which work for the category as well as the specific feature title.  This is an initiative developed by our team at Forest Hill.  It is leading to a change in customer behavior with magazine displays.

fhn_cardisp.JPGClick on the image for a larger version of the display our team created promoting the latest Top Gear Australia.  This display confronts people as they leave our men’s magazine aisle.  In addition to promoting Top Gear we promote other motoring titles.

This display occupies space which previously was dead or used ineffectively at best.

fhn_cardisp_aislecap.JPGClick on this image to see the Top Gear display in the context of the men’s aisle.   As they leave the aisle they walk past a waterfall display of Top Gear and then see the display and get another crack at related popular motoring titles.

This integrated display is proving to be more effective for us that a feature display of Top Gear somewhere where it is a good billboard but not working for the category.

Since we have been using this new space in this way we have noticed people spending time browsing the titles – something which is rare with traditional magazine displays.

I’d like to see magazine publishers encourage a more holistic approach to feature displays.  While promoting a single title is often appropriate, there are occasions when sharing display space with other titles from the category creates a win win.  This is what we are pursuing with our Top Gear display.

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magazines

Ideas for turning around newsagency stationery sales

fhn_stat_disp.JPGThe stationery department in a newsagency responds well to attention yet it it often the poor cousin when it comes to labour and capital investment.  A small investment in rejigging stock can drive sales growth.  I have seen this first-hand in my own newsagencies and in others.  Here are some suggestions from the stationery page of the notes I handed at out at the recent Kick Start Your Newsagency workshops which newsagents may find useful:

  1. Decide what you stand for.  Your stationery department must have a focus.  It could be brand, range, price or something else.  Whatever you stand for, it will guide every decision you make.  If it does not guide every decision, you are not standing for the right thing.  I’d suggest you not stand for being the retailer of last resort.  There are too many newsagents who think like that already.  You cannot retire on profit made from selling a obscure stationery item once or twice a year.
  2. Eliminate dead stock.  I usually find that 30% of stationery in a newsagency is dead.  Print a report of stock items which have not sold for six months. This report should include the value of current stock holdings. In an average newsagency we often find this to be around 30% of all stationery stock holdings. Look at the list carefully. Do you really want to carry these items which are not selling?
  3. Restock to serve your customers.  Determine the space which would become available by quitting these items and plan on how this space can be best used in the business. Now would be a good time to talk with GNS and others who guide your stationery decisions. GNS can provide you with a top sellers list for your state. There may be extensions to current ranges you could consider or whole new categories.
  4. Clean up.  Once you have a commercially viable use for the space, quit the items in a way which deals with this quickly – any cash is better than none which is what you are getting now.
  5. Refresh.  Use the opportunity to reinvest the look and feel of stationery, re-price all stock if price has been an issue for you. Re-train your staff.  re-educate your customers.  Re-launch.
  6. Manage by touch.  Take every item off the shelf and put it back. This process of touching every stationery stock item will have you review your position on stationery.
  7. Obsess about what you stand for.  Remember, your business must stand for something. With stationery, it could be brand, range, price or service. If customers don’t perceive that you stand for something they will not think about you when they need to purchase stationery.  Whatever you decide to stand for, pursue it relentlessly.

Stationery responds well to attention in newsagencies.  Give your stationery department attention and expect good rewards in return.

Will these simple ideas turn stationery sales around?  I don’t know.  They have worked in other newsagencies and they may work for you.  They are not bad ideas and, if followed, will do no harm to your business.

My key point is that your stationery department needs to be worked.  Invest in it and it will better serve you. In today’s climate especially.

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retail

Newspaper columnist calls for his paper to close

David Sarno writes in his column at the Los Angeles Times why the newspaper should not be saved.

And as much as we cherish the newspaper that arrives on our doorstep every morning, as a medium for delivering news, it loses to the Web in too many ways. At the top of the list is, of course, currency. What you read on front pages is, quite literally, yesterday’s news — while what you see on home-pages is what is happening in the real-time present.

If you’re an environmental type, you’ll know that newspapers are not a green product, either. The Green Press Initiative estimated that in 2006, newsprint consumed 95 million trees, to say nothing of the energy consumed or the pollution generated by printing and vehicle delivery.

There is considerably more to Sarno’s column.  Be sure to read it all if you are interested in the future of newspapers.

I don’t agree with Sarno, yet.  While the US is overserviced with newspapers, the medium has a place – albeit, quite different to the model in the US today.

Our situation in Australia, as I write here often, is quite different thanks mainly due to the tightly controlled (low cost) distribution network provided by newsagents.  Changes in that space and other factors will see conversations in the US reach our shores.

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Media disruption
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