We have put Good Health at the front counter with its free
Now we hav this counter space well settled promoting titles with a good giveaway and with more titles to promote, we are looking for additional display opportunities which will work as well.
No sooner had Intralot installed the equipment for their new lottery offer to launch July 1 and Tattersalls were in telling us that Intralot cannot have access to any of their space. If we do what Tattersalls want we will have to reduce our counter space by 30%. This is despite Tattersalls having less product than previously. I sure hope that commonsense prevails. Tattersalls is more concerned about rules than commercial outcomes. We give them tremendous coverage outside their area and this drives sales but they don’t care. All they are worried about is Intralot getting some of their space. We could follow their rules and, at the same time, stop our extra promotion, they’d lose at least 20% of our sales. Sure we would suffer but Tattersalls would be happy. Tattersalls ought to treat this as a business decision and treat us as business people.
The special edition of PC User – Year’s Best Reviews is a waste of paper. In many cases, the reviews were out of date when they were first printed. This reprint collection is even more out of date. People interested in computer reviews are m ore likely to access reviews online in forums and blogs than buying this magazine.
Oh well, Powerball went off. First division reached $58 million. That’s some prize. next week it will be winter between-season retail as usual. While the OzLotto lottery has jackpotted to $13 million, it’s not enought to generate much interest.
I hope that Powerball does not go off tonight. I know that we should want a winner and cheer if that happens but selfishly, another jackpot would be wonderful. The first division prize would reach at least $60 million and possibly as much as $70 million.
A $70 million division one prize would drive newsagencies and other lottery outlets nuts in the next week -good nuts that is.
While I am thrilled with the sales kick this week, another week or two would be fantastic – we are between seasons after all. With Mother’s Day a distant memory, the next major retail activity will be around school holidays and mid year sales. So, the Powerball jackpot is hitting at an excellent time for us. The add-on sales are excellent. Every department in the business is buzzing. Newspaper publishers, magazine publishers, greeting card publishers and other suppliers to newsagents should see a positive impact in their numbers.
Yes, I hope that Powerball does not go off tonight.
The photo shows the magazine display our team created next to one of our lottery counters at the front of our newsagency.
Each of the magazines connects with the dream and aspirations of winning the $50 million Powerball jackpot. BRW Rich 200, Wealth, Vacations, Airliner, Mercedes etc.
The jackpot is a good opportunity to show titles which would otherwise not make it to the front of our shop. I’m not sure what magazines we will display if Powerball does not go off and it jackpots.
We’ll take any tie-in opportunity like this since other magazine retailers – supermarkets and convenience stores – do the bare minimum.
With Madonna on the cover of Vanity Fair and Elle and Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of Cosmopolitan and Mindfood, it makes sense to place the titles together. This way, fans of the star on the cover are encouraged to buy both titles. Changing magazine placement based on the cover as we have done in the photo is retail 101. The editors choose the stars because of their pulling power right now. We’d be silly to not leverage that for all it is worth. A salable star is more important than the masthead under which they appear.
With the new sex In the City film starting Thursday we are expecting to need a Sarah Jessica Parker section.
The Monthly has a track record for successful tips fro recent covers: Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama, John Howard (exiting) Maxine McKew. The latest issue has Malcolm Turnbull on the cover. I wonder if the tradition continues. Sales wise, The Monthly is traveling well. Recent audit results show it is a rapidly growing title. We leverage that by pl;acing it above The Age for the first week of on-sale.
There are reports that Staples is to get access to Corporate Express’ books. Stationery is in play on many fronts. Newsagents need to be on their toes now more than ever. Is Staples does buy CE the ladnscape in Australia change without a doubt.
We decided to add Vogue India to our range of Vogue titles and received our first stock yesterday. We have one left out of three copies of the current issue. I’m happy with that and we still four weeks of the on-sale left.
We are working at carefully expanding our magazine range around the categories which we see working – hence the decision to take on Vogue India. We see ourselves as a magazine specialist., If we are to be true to this self applied label we have to constantly expand our range. I hope all our moves work as well as Vogue India.
We are promoting International Father’s Day. It is one of the many ‘minor’ seasons to which we are committed to as a greeting card specialist. Wikipedia has an excellent list of when Father’s Day occurs around the world – the list of countries noted to celebrate on the third Sunday in June is considerable.
I was in Geelong last night speaking at a newsagent group meeting, sharing strategies for growing magazine sales. The meeting was held at the offices of the Geelong Advertiser. I was impressed with the relationship between the Geelong area newsagents and the Geelong Advertiser. There is clear healthy mutual respect. While the Advertiser does not have a monopoly on such a relation ship with newsagents, it is rare.
Demonstrating the value of the good relationship was Circulation Director Geoff Smith’s pitch about the Advertiser’s Bride magazine. Newsagent commission is 45%. There are reasons for this which Geoff explained. Where other publishers would have understood reasons to pay a premium, they would have stuck with 25% believing that newsagents would complain but do nothing.
The mutual respect in Geelong sees a win win – the publisher hs Bride magazine well represented in the area and newsagents have an opportunity to make additional margin.
I’d like to see newsagents somehow share information among themselves, across regions, about their publisher relationships. I see this encouraging those less fortunate to approach their publisher relationship is a more proactive way and, hopefully, unlock the value I see being experienced in Geelong. As I understand it, several newsagents have nurtured this relationship with the Advertiser. Doing this outside of a more formal Association push might be more useful.
Better relationships with publishers are more likely in regional and rural areas because the mutual dependence is stronger. That said, some newsagents have bee able to leverage good relationships with capital city publishers – but not enough.
Wal-Mart has launched a free classified ad service at its website, walmart.com. We tried a similar service with newsagents (FindIt) but could not gain sufficient traction. This is a good move by Wal-Mart.
A report on Page 62 of today’s Australian Financial Review suggests that the company is close to sorting its woes out. I am interested that the key quotes from Ian Christiansen, CEO of Bill Express, relate to newsagents and that the company compensates us for non performance. Hmm, Bill Express established the terms around which it acquired newsagent locations and it was through these terms that it trained newsagents on the compensation model for taking the Bill Express equipment.
The AFR article tales about possible legal action by newsagents against Bill Express. I am aware of five groups of newsagents working with lawyers and at least another fifteen working individually with lawyers. I’d expect ASIC, the ACCC, the NSW CTTT and several other statutory bodies to be looking closely at Bill Express and, in particular, how newsagents were recruited.
Mobile phone recharge is the largest volume product category sold in newsagencies through the Bill Express equipment. I’d expect that the troubles of the company over the last two months have resulted in a considerable fall in mobile recharge revenue. Many newsagents have gone elsewhere – to ePay, banks and our own eziPass – regardless of the continuing cost of their Bill Express equipment.
Not much has changed in marketing collateral around mobile phone recharge in newsagencies for years. I see this as a barrier to newsagents achieving better growth from the category.
As with any offer pitched in a retail environment, change is essential. This is even more true in the visually noisy environment of a newsasgency.
To support the ezipass platform in newsagencies, we have started developing several collateral options. Th photo shows one prototype for which we hope to get carrier approval from Telstra, 3 mobile and Virgin mobile. It is a “wobbler” which connects to the back of a register or some other hardware in a high traffic area.
We have four quite diffrent collateral strategies in development and eachhas several execution options. The whole kit, if we roll it out, will bring regular change to how newsagents promote mobile recharge and, we hope, result in a considerable lift in sales.
We are fortunate to have a marketing team in-house creating this and other material.
The wraparound cover of the Melbourne edition of the Trading Post newspaper is a reflection on the health (or otherwise) of the print publication. It is a four page pitch to buy and sell online, nothing about print.
I guess their decision to partner with Australia Post over newsagents to do their 100 point check for online traders ought to have demonstrated their disconnect with print and the print distribution channel.
I checked our sales and the sales in several other newsagencies last night – the Trading Post is shedding retail sales fast, faster than any other daily or weekly newspaper from what I can see. In one newsagency, sales are down 33% year on year looking at the January to May data.
If I were them I would be pushing people online too. However, I’d do it in partnership with newsagents rather than abusing them.
I am surprised at the 34% increase in bills paid in our newsagency using Bill Express in May 2008 compared to May 2007 given the poor health of the Bill Express company. Bill payment continues to be less efficient than I would like with most sales not including any other product.
FHM will work better out of this recycled magazine stand next to our main newspaper stand than if we created a power end display. We know from the success of ZOO and Alpha on the other side of the newspaper stand than popular male titles near newspapers work. Hence the placement of the stand. In return for leeching off the newspapers like this we have a second at the front of the shop, near our lottery counter.
It is important that suppliers allow us to break their rules in pursuit of better sales.
House and Garden magazine takes pride of place at the counter this week thanks to the free photo album which comes with the title. The display is not as ‘clean’ this week thanks to the $50 million Powerball jackpot. Nevertheless, I expect it to do as well as other titles we promote in this space with a free giveaway. The giveaway is key – its value has to be quickly identifiable.
I’d expect to sell more House and Garden off this space than the power end we did last week as part of our ACP commitment.
Girlfriend last week did well in this space, proving its usefulness with a younger demographic to what we traditionally target here.
We are taking a great idea from a newsXpress colleague and creating a pack of Powerball tickets. For $50 our customers will get several goes at the $50 million jackpot. Based on a trial on the weekend it will work a treat. Creating products like this around jackpots is a great way to make the most of the biggest lottery prize ever opportunity.
The buying power of the Government owned Australia Post retail network is in plain view with their current offer of reflex for $4.95 a ream. While Big W and other retailers offer reflex for this price from time to time, only Australia Post pulls consumers in for such a low cost – thanks to their postal products monopoly.
This is where they abuse the protection of Government ownership. The Government owned Post Office opposite my newsagency ought not be competing with me in stationery – a sentiment shared with many newsagents in my situation.
UPDATE: I am reliably informed that Licenced Post Offices buy Reflex for $4.82 including GST. Not happy I suspect.
Given the mess of Bill Express and the removal of subsidies paid to newsagents by the company, some newsagents are taking steps to cancel direct debit arrangements for payment of the old Bill Express equipment. Without commenting on the appropriateness of such a step, I am grateful to a colleague who pointed me to advice on how to do this and a sample letter which could be used. An ACCC bulletin from 2002 also has some interesting comments to make about this.
Newsagents need to consider carefully the action they take. The direct debit is the monthly pain of the failing Bill Express service. The bigger picture is who “promoted” Bill Express to your business? If you relied on the advice or recommendation of an individual or some other party in making your Bill Express decision you might want to talk with your lawyer about any liability they may share.
I refer to my blog post from the weekend which outlines reasons Bill Express may be in breach of the agreement and why, to this non-lawyer, associated agreements could be terminated.
I stress, again, I am not a lawyer. My blog posts should not be taken as advice. The best advice for your business will be that for which you pay an appropriately qualified legal professional.
Garry Goodman of Churchill Newsagency has started a blog. I’ll add a link to the blog roll on the right. Garry joins Jarryd Moore of newsXpress Singleton and Peter Dunn of Dunn’s Newsagency in Tamworth as the Australian newsagency bloggers of which I am aware. Steven Denham is the UK based newsagent writing at the Village Counter Talk blog. These are all good voices worth engaging with.
For a couple of years we did well with the Mont Marte artist supplies range. Things went off the rails when they could not supply some items to us while continuing to supply their own retail store in Melbourne as well as customers who ordered the same products direct through their company’s e-commerce website. Their actions made it clear that they preferred a direct to consumer relationship over their newsagent relationship. We ditched Mont Marte and replaced them with the Canson rang, an art supplier committed to the retail channel and not seeking to compete with us. Sales are great and customers are happy that we can more easily get the stock they want. Mont marte going direct to consumers is not how newsagent suppliers ought to operate. It will be interesting to see if they have learned their lesson.
BEAT THE TAX RUSH WITH THE LOWEST PRICES is the pitch screaming from the Officeworks website. The problem for Officeworks is that they do not have the lowest prices. Last week, one of their customers bought two packs of HP brand toner from us for 17% less than what they paid for the same product at Officeworks the day before. Our everyday price was lower than the Officeworks everyday price. The Officeworks pitch of the lowest prices is not true.
Businesses which want to save on stationery costs ought to check their local newsagency. I am sure our newsXpress Forest Hill store is not alone on beating Officeworks on price for some items.
Our customer was shocked at the 17% difference in price – hopefully enough to ditch the superstore and return to us next time for toner.