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

Help from a rejected job applicant

We received more than 150 applications for two casual positions we advertised on SEEK for our newsagencies a couple of weeks ago.  This was an overwhelming response.  Most were lazy applications where people attach a resume and send it without really researching the job.  The volume of applications meant had to make some broad stroke decisions, meaning we probably said no to some we should have considered more carefully.

Of all those we said no to, one responded and what followed was an email conversation about how we went about the process and her own situation.  This interaction reminded me that each application is a person and that sometimes you have to dig for gold.

The challenge is time and this will get worse if unemployment rises – I can see us getting more than 200 applicants for a position advertised next year.  If each application is given fair assessment time, it would take more than a day to review them all.  Our next job ad will have some rules which will make it easy to sort out the lazy applicant from those with attention to detail.  This will help us quickly cut the list to something more manageable.

While Amita, the applicant with whom I corresponded following my rejection email does not meet our needs because of travel plans, her interaction was gracefully handled encouragement to review our application processes and for that I am grateful.

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Newsagency challenges

Testing new products

scratchtrial.JPGWe are constantly trying new products in our newsagencies as part of our commitment to constant change.  We enjoy the failures as much as the successes.  Both teach us plenty about our customers and our businesses.  Sometimes we hit a real surprise.  Take these scratchette things – they are used for scratching instant lottery tickets.  I thought they would be a sure fire hit at the lottery counter.  I was wrong.  We have tried them in several locations and at different price points over two months.  We have sold very few.  Our customers prefer to use a coin for scratching the instant lottery tickets.  The most popular up-sell items at the lottery counter are Liquorice Allsorts followed by New Idea or Woman’s Day.

If anyone would like to try these please let me know.  We have a pack we can send for free.

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Lotteries

ACCC letter re Intralot

sbay.JPGI was disappointed to see the Herald Sun report yesterday about the ACCC decision about Tattersalls’ handing of their dedicated area and the introduction of Intralot. I am one of the newsagents who received the letter from the ACCC referred to in the report. I received my letter in August following a meeting at my shop with representatives of the ACCC.

My personal view is that the ACCC has got this wrong. Tattersalls has lost what was a key part of their business – instant scratch tickets – yet they have not relinquished the real-estate they had set aside for them. Our scratch ticket bay remains useless. This is holding my business back. It is also an impediment to the active promotion of Intralot in the high traffic part of the business.

All I want is the ability to sell my customers any soft gambling product at any point in my business. This is what my customers want too. Tattersalls’ barriers are not good for business nor do they engender goodwill.

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Lotteries

How different we are

I have been in Perth for the last couple of days and have had an opportunity to visit several newsagencies. While I see differences between newsagencies on the Eastern Seaboard, the differences between newsagencies in the east and west of Australia are far greater.

Visiting newsagents in a variety of situations is important for anyone working with newsagents nationally – essential for any association claiming to represent newsagents.

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Newsagency challenges

Christmas candy

dlchristmas08.JPGOur Forest Hill team has rejigged our counter now that our Darrell Lea Christmas stock has arrived. Even though margin on Darrell Lea is slimmer than magazines, it is an important range to have here at the front of the shop next to our main lottery counter.

This display attracts good impulse business – as does the Herald Sun stand you can see in the photo.

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confectionary

newsXpress embraces Facebook

newsXpress last month became the first newsagency marketing group to establish a page on social media site Facebook.  The purpose of the page is to provide a link for everyone connected with newsXpress -suppliers, store employees, newsXpress members and others.  Several newsXpress stores have also set up their own Facebook pages.

Social media sites like Facebook are an important glue, connecting people who otherwise may not do so all that easily.

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Newspaper marketing

Saving money on magazines

club-card-front.jpgThe magazine circulation results announced last week were not good for any of the top selling titles. Rather than get lured into a negative mindset about magazine sales we are promoting our Magazine Club Card harder than ever.

Every card we hand out demonstrates our point of difference over other retailers in our centre and most nearby newsagents. While we have seen some falls, in the main they are lower than the numbers published last week.

What is it they say, when the going gets tough the tough get going. That’s how we view this marketplace, pursuing every opportunity to offer an excellent retail experience based around valued product with deals to respect loyalty.

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magazines

Popular graduation gifts

graduation.JPGThese small owls are a successful new product we have found for our Frankston newsagency.  Without any special promotion of feature location, they have sold well – outside the traditional graduation season.  We sought a range of graduation gifts given that we sell plenty of cards around the event.  The owls work because we are moving more to a US model where graduation is recognised even at the kindergarten level in some areas.

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Gifts

Quitting Universal Magazines titles

I have written to Network Services and NDD advising that I do not wish to receive any Universal Magazines titles in my two newsagencies in the future. In the letter to each I have outlined two scenarios under which I would gladly reconsider.

Retail real-estate is expensive. Labour is expensive. Once these are factored into the cost of managing long shelf life magazines (greater than 30 days on-sale) most of them become uneconomic.

We newsagents have the magazine supply model we have because we permit it. The space is ours. The labour resource works for us. The key asset everyone craves is our network reach.

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magazine distribution

Women’s Health Diary TV campaign

diarycover2009.jpgThe Australian Women’s Health Diary TV campaign is paying off. I saw one customer buy the diary on the weekend because of it. She came in to buy a magazine, saw the diary at the counter and mentioned the TV ad. While allocating counter space is a challenge, The Australian Women’s Health Diary is an excellent product to have at the counter right now because of this current TV campaign.

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Diaries

Reusing the newspaper stand

qn_papers.JPGOne innovative newsagent in Queensland has reinvented their newspaper display to promote other products – magazines currently as the photo shows. Previously, this entire space was a newspaper story. This move is a slap in the face for Queensland Newspapers which appears to take a less flexible view to product placement than their News Limited counterparts in the southern states. Anchoring a product to a fixed location is bad for business. Smart newspaper publishers work with newsagents on more flexible and changeable displays.

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Newspapers

A bear improves my social status

markbear.JPGCarrying a big bear does wonders for your social status I found on the weekend. I had to carry Basil, a large Gund bear, from our Sophie Randall Forest Hill store first to our newsagency and they in to our Melbourne Central store. People talked to me. Some asked where I bought it, another said someone was lucky and another said they hoped it was going to a good home. One older lady walked alongside me a kind of snuggled the bear, saying nothing. Even driving into the city several people tooted and waved at the bear riding next to me. The amount of attention was surprising.

Reflecting on this attention I was reminded that retail is about theatre and connecting with aspirations. The bear meant something to them, they changed when they saw it.

I am sure I could have led people to a Sophie store with Basil or a larger bear clinging to me – like a walking billboard.

A challenge in our newsagencies is that they do not change much week to week. Sure there are new magazines in every couple of days and new newspapers every day and we have seasons like Christmas to spice things up but our stores do not really change.

My weekend experience has me wondering what “Basil” I can find for my newsagencies to get more people noticing us and existing customers taking more notice of us. The answer lies in us doing the unexpected and making the experience enjoyable.

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retail

Christmas window

Here is one of the Christmas Windows at our Sophie Melbourne Central store.  This is the smaller of the two windows we have.

dsc05221.JPG

We have used the same concept in all four Sophie stores.

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retail

Adapt or perish – Rupert Murdoch says

Adapt or perish, that is the message from Rupert Murdoch to newspaper publishers around the world in his third Boyer Lecture to be broadcast today on ABC Radio National. The Herald Sun published an edited transcript yesterday. Here are a some quotes from the lecture which I found interesting:

I like the look and feel of newspapers as much as anyone. But our real business isn;t printing on dead trees. It’s giving our readers great journalism and great judgment.

In short we are moving from news papers to news brands.

The challenges are real. There will probably never be a paperless office, but young people are starting paperless homes.

The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world.

Read the except in the paper yesterday or the full lecture which will be online after today’s broadcast.

The debate about the future of newspapers aside, Rupert Murdoch’s lecture is about change and the need to embrace this.

From a newsagent perspective, this means embracing change through every part of our business – leveraging our key assets to our advantage, taking control over parts of our business which we do not control today, developing shop fits for our needs and not the needs of builders or suppliers, pursuing new traffic generators, pursuing better margin product, refusing to engage in out of date practices and creating retail experiences which are ground breaking .

Most of all, for newsagents embracing change is about becoming entrepreneurial.

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Media disruption

Better Homes immediate success

dsc05269.JPGThe sales value of the display for Better Homes and Gardens at the counter today was immediate. A customer came to the counter with the newspaper, saw the magazine and purchased it as well. BHG is that kind of title, easy to sell to people who come in to purcahse something else, especially at the weekend. Better Homes and Gardens gets this premium space at the counter this weekend thanks to the free sheet of wrapping paper inside the magazine as they offer each Christmas.

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magazines

Borders and the book price hike

Borders in New zeal and and Australia has published a catalogue listing some books at above their recommended retail.  The same catalogue offers that they will match any price which is better than theirs.  Borders would have known that their above recommended retail prices are higher than just about every other book retailer.  This is cynical marketing which presents as being a good offer when it is not.  They must expect some people to fall for this.  The Age has more details on what Borders has done.

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Book retailing

South Australia bans plastic bags

Legislation banning the use of plastic bags was passed in South Australia on Thursday. The Government has a good website with all the details. This makes it easier for retailers to deal with this complex issue. Acting on a law is far easier than a voluntary situation. We have tried a couple of times to charge for bags or eliminate them altogether and each time our customers complained – they like plastic bags, especially for newspapers.

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Environment

Planning the shopfit

nx_frank_front.JPGThe image is the planned shopfront for our Frankston newsagency.  We have been working with designers, the landlord and other stakeholders for months to find a fit which is flexible and fits the various requirements we face.  What started as a partial fit has become a complete refit.  Nothing from the existing newsagency will be retained.  Where we have spent the most time have been in obsessing about flexibility.  We consider it vital that the shop be able to be easily reconfigured as the needs of the business change.

On the front left of the shop will be our card and gift offer.  To the right from the counter back will be magazines and next to that will be stationery.  Across the entrance we will feature categories and products we wish to push.

Now all we need is final building approval before we can lock in dates.

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newsagency marketing

Lottery sales and marketing advice

Click here for a preview copy of the lottery sales and marketing advice I have developed.  I was looking onlin for simple free advice on how to boost lottery sales and could not find any.  While some of my ideas are not new, that they are packaged (with some new ideas) in one place makes it easy for a lottery retailer to select what they think will work for them.

Promoting lottery products is important given the impulse nature of the purchase for many customers. The completed advice sheet will be loaded at the Tower Systems website when completed next week.

Ensure that any lottery marketing you plan meets with the regulations under which you sell these products.

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Lotteries

Promoting Christmas magazines

christmasmags08.JPGWe are promoting Christmas magazines at the front of our shop in addition to the usual place you find these titles. We have gone for a range from the high volume through to the special interest. many of these titles are ideal impulse purchases so having them in a high traffic area makes sense – to see this range a customer would have to scan our three magazine aisles and few would do this. While supermarkets and convenience outlets may have some of these titles, non matches the range of a newsagency. However, that message does not get out unless we display that we do have the range.

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magazines

Bargain Shoppers Guide no bargain

A newsagent shared their data for Bargain Shoppers Guide to Melbourne with me today. This title a sales history of selling 25%. The supply quantity this year has not been lowered to reflect the 70% failure rate. With an on sale period of seven months, this title, if left on the shelf, is nothing short of a disaster financially for the newsagent. While the newsagent can early return the gross oversupply to the distributor (NDD) they will have to wait for their cash to be returns.

Universal and NDD claim that the ability for newsagents to early return solves any over supply issue. This is a ridiculous argument. The problem of gross oversupply should not occur in the first place. Why send stock you know will never sell? The answer is that by sending them out you get a fee for service. Newsagents do not get a fee for service. This is why they are abused as they are for poor performing titles like Bargain Shoppers Guide to Melbourne in the newsagents I looked at today.

While I am no lawyer, I would expect that continued gross oversupply of Bargain Shoppers Guide to Melbourne represents unconscionable conduct against this newsagency and, most likely, other newsagents.

As I blogged six weeks ago, we received our usual overload at our Forest Hill store. We pushed the magazine in a high traffic area. It failed. We will return more than 50% of stock received. The publisher and newsagent have this data from previous years. This makes a mockery of their arguments to me over the last two weeks.

This is another dud title from Universal Magazines.

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magazines

When we don’t have the ink

We started our online ink and toner business, Inkfast, four years ago.  While we have moved the operation to a separate location, it still plays a role with our newsagencies.  If someone asks for an item we do not stock, we give them an Inkfast card and invite them to purchase direct.  Inkfast delivers to their door.  This works well, we see new business coming from this retail promotion regularly.

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Stationery

TV commercial to launch Sophie Randall

We are launching a TV commercial on channels Seven and Ten in Melbourne next week to launch our expanded Sophie Randall card and gift shops. The commercial has been created to reflect a warm and personal style associated with Sophie. Click on the image below to see a copy of the ad as loaded at YouTube.

We are supporting the ad with the delivery of high quality flyers to homes around three of our locations in the last week of this month.

This is the first advertising we have undertaken for Sophie since we opened at Forest Hill in February last year. With our Toorak store opening two months ago we felt the time was right to step out with our unique and personal offer.

We hope to release details of the Sophie franchise model in then first quarter of next year.

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About us

Working with the merchandiser

merchandiserdisp.JPGThe visual merchandisers funded by magazine publishers can be frustrating sometimes – most often when they do a display promoting a title which is nowhere near the display.  Take Notebook – as in the photo.  Without proper management these posters could we far away from the title.  With proper management they are nearby and more helpful to our goal for our shop.

A good merchandiser works with you and this is what we are finding at our Forest Hill store.  There is good dialogue between our magazine and most merchandisers and the result is titles being promoted near to where they are on our shelves.  This may seem logical.  Check your local newsagency, often it is not done this way.

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magazines
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