mX newspaper goes mobile
mX, the daily newspaper from News Ltd is set to launch a mobile version of the newspaper according to B&T. This will use editorial content from the print edition packaged for consumption through mobile devices.
Easier mobile recharge for newsagents
Thanks to further discussions with the folks at St.George Bank, we have navigated a way for newsagents to more easily access Optus and Vodafone recharge product. eziPass newsagents who sign for the St.George Bank deal can install a terminal to process Eftpos and credit card transactions as well as dispense Optus and Vodafone recharge. Everything else can be sold through eziPass. If we are fortunate enough to able to bring Optus and Vodafone to the eziPass platform in the future and you then wish to move to an integrated Eftpos solution (where Eftpos is processed through your computer) St.George will swap out the first terminal for an integrated unit without additional cost.
School days journal
This school days journal is a product we have at our Sophie Randall business which should work equally well in newsagencies. It’s a folder with all sorts of sections for recording information about the school experience. This is the kind of gift item which suits newsagencies.
Using the Bill Express screen
We have found a good use for the Bill Express MiAds screen which has not worked in months – to promote the Powerball $50 million jackpot.
Good Food and Wine Show
We are promoting food and wine related titles in our category based magazine feature this week. It makes sense because it is the Good Food and Wine Show in Melbourne this weekend.
Connecting with local events like this shows we’re connected with the community – beyond our shop. It provides a framework of relevance to the broad range of titles we carry.
Being situated next to a lottery counter and newspaper unit helps drive good impulse purchases. These moves, driving impulse purchases from honey pot products like lotteries and newspapers, are vitally important to us if we are to build a deeper basket.
Girlfriend magazine at the counter
Girlfriend with the free mascara has replaced our Men’s Health display between two register points at the counter. Thanks to extra posters from Pacific Magazines we have been able to create a good impression. The display has been up two days and is already working.
I know newsagents come here looking at photos for ideas – the key with this type of display is to feature magazines with valuable free gifts, to place it next to a busy register and to change the display at least weekly. By choosing the right title with a good gift like Girlfriend this month you ought to see a good kick in sales in a week.
Hello royal wedding issue popular
While the Queen may be miffed at the photos of the royal wedding in the latest Hello magazine from the
Lottery jackpots!
With Powerball not going off tonight, first division next Thursday will now be worth at least $50 million. Tattslotto on Saturday is a superdraw worth $19 million, Tuesday’s OzLotto game has jackpotted to $10 million and Wednesday’s Tattslotto has jackpotted to $2.175 million. This is the best week of jackpots and superdraws I can recall. Brilliant.
Bill Express in the news again
The Age has a good story today about some of the challenges around OnQ and Bill Express. My only comment would be that there could have been more complete coverage of the plight of newsagents.
Newsagents were actively recruited into Bill Express by representatives of the company and through the active endorsement of their association, the ANF. The ANF received a fee for success and pursued this by organising a national roadshow and other activities at which newsagent sign up was sought. This is where newsagents were signed on for the agreements they have today, the agreements costing over $500 a month.
How newsagents were recruited and who provided recruitment services will be key to any legal action by aggrieved newsagents as it is the representations made which will come under close scrutiny. I am aware that the ACCC is asking questions about this. Newsagents and associations with files from 2003 should be able to help the ACCC with their inquiries.
Amazon Kindle success
Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, is reported as saying that 6% of titles sold by Amazon.com are for its Kindle e-book reader. That is a significant shift from print in the short time Kindle has been out.
Newspapers and the online challenge
The Age on May 23 ran a cartoon by Wiley which showed a chap reading the poster in front of a newsstand
Today in The Times. Print media isn’t dead. Go to our website for the whole story.
I thought it was funny and didn’t think much more about it. Gaye Lebardon writing at the Press Democrat takes a different view – it’s one well worth reading.
Newspaper publisher hits small business
Newsagents have been split into two classes by the folks at The Age. Retail newsagents are paid a commission as a percentage of the cover price. Home delivery newsagents, the people who get up in the middle of the night to manage the delivery of newspapers to homes by 6am are no longer paid based on the cover price.
The Age has unilaterally decided to compensate home delivery newsagents based on a fee they decide. While they previously controlled the delivery fee, newsagents could rely on benefiting at least from cover price increases. Now that has been taken away.
VANA, the association representing newsagents, has effectively endorsed the change in compensation arrangements from The Age. They did this by writing to newsagents at the same time as The Age. VANA should have left this issue alone and let The Age muck this up for themselves.
With fuel, labour and other costs rising, it is unconscionable in my view that a rich company like Fairfax, publisher of The Age, stops newsagents from charging a fee which at least covers their costs. This latest move protects the
I am okay because I sold my home delivery run in late 2006. Newsagents trying to sell now will, in my view, get less because of the new fee structure implemented by The Age – they have certainly made home delivery runs less valuable than they were two months ago, something I suspect VANA has not seen yet.
If I were
Happy Tower Systems newsagents
It has been a thrill to catch up with so many Tower Newsagents at the ANF convention these last three days. They are a happy bunch of people. This is a common comment from all of the Tower team at the convention – how happy our users are. Back in the mid 1990s when our customer service was not what it should have been many of our newsagent customers were not happy. It is the memory of those couple of bad years we caused which drives us on customer service today.
Once consequence of happy newsagent users of our software is the conversations which lead to new opportunities being uncovered. Happy people share more because they trust you more. We are returning from the Gold Coast with several excellent suggestions.
Everyone loves lottery jackpots
The Powerball jackpot tonight is generating excellent business for us. It is a traffic and sales bonanza and we are certainly making the most of the opportunity. My excitement is somewhat dampened by the news from Manaccom about their online OzLotteries deal with ACP. Theirs is an interesting play since it is outside the sites built directly by the lottery businesses themselves. They attract customers we cannot reach from bricks and mortar businesses. They also provide a convenience offer to current bricks and mortar customers who will want to migrate their purchases online. This has to make us work harder on customer service – to prove the value of face to face sales of lottery products.
I was interested to see press stories talk about the value this week especially because of the jackpot.
Mills & Boon cards
We don’t sell Mills & Boon books in our newsagency but if we did I’d want to have the Mills & Boon range of greeting cards.
They are a nice fun take on the covers of the popular Mills and Boon books. I can see the cards and books being displayed next to each other – almost as a gift package.
Congratulations winners
Congratulations to Doug and Tracey Otter of Williamstown Newsagency for winning retail Newsagent of the Year and to Melbourne Central Newsagency for winning Distribution Newsagent of the Year at the ANF Convention dinner tonight.
XchangeIT declares DOS dead for newsagents
Finally the magazine distributors have started to get serious about IT compliance in newsagencies through their XchangeIT platform. Their presentation today made it clear that DOS is dead. For all their bleating that DOS has a life, POS Solutions has been ignored and their remaining 300 DOS users will have to make alternative arrangements to get access to the technology suite other newsagents will be able to access. The announcement at the ANF Convention today is long overdue.
Of course, I am pleased because our Tower Systems newsagents community of 1,500+ is well placed. I feel for the 300 or so newsagents using DOS software. It should not be a surprise that DOS is dead because Microsoft an others turned their back on this old old platform more than ten years ago.
Trading Post smacks newsagents
Decades of faithful support from newsagents of the Trading Post weekly newspaper has been “rewarded” by the publisher choosing Australia Post as the partner for its expanded online Trading Post auction offering. Traders will need to go to an Australia Post outlet (and stand in a line for too long) to complete a 100 point check to be approved by the Trading Post. This is an insult to newsagents who could have easily provided the 100 point check service and another example of the disregard Trading Post publisher Sensis has for our channel.
The elephant in the room
The elephant in the room at the ANF National Convention this week has been the Bill Express issue. Just about every newsagent I meet asks what is likely to happen and whether they will have to pay back the lease they took out on the equipment. Like so much about Bill Express at the moment not much can be discussed publicly. I can’t help but feel that the Convention would have been a good time for newsagents (and only newsagents) to get together and talk about the situation.
The Vodafone window
The Government owned Australia Post shop opposite our newsagency had a big display window promoting Vodafone installed late last week. It looks better in person than the photo shows. We are jealous of the professional looking window and the deal they must on to justify the space and stock investment.
Mobile phone handsets are a challenge for newsagencies as our stores carry more stock per square metre than most other retailers, space is limited. Newsagencies are visually noisy too – a corporate display like for Vodafone would get lost when competing with bold magazine displays and lottery jackpot displays.
We have some ideas on how handsets could be represented and this is something we hope to play with soon.
Correlation between gifts and cards
Digging deeper into the benchmark study we undertook based on sales data from 89 newsagencies, it is clear that there is a correlation between gift sales and card sales. In each store with strong gift sales, the card sales were considerably above average for the benchmark. Based on this, why would a newsagent not have a crack at gifts – even if space is tight it makes sense to try and find a way to play in the category and therefore enjoy growth in cards.
Newsagency of the future workshop
I have been asked by three newsagency suppliers to present my Newsagency of the Future workshop from the ANF conference elsewhere. A couple want it presented internally and another would like me to present it to newsagents on their behalf. When I get back to Melbourne I’ll look into this and maybe consider a presentation in each state. I am certainly keen to open for discussion the issues / challenges raised.
Newsagents have a tremendous opportunity to control their future, all it takes is willingness to embrace change and a desire to think and act as business people focused on the future as opposed to the past.
Tough decisions for newsagents (3)
Here is the final set of challenges I covered in my presentation of the Newsagency of the Future at the ANF conference yesterday. These are not tough decisions for newsagents as such, they are challenges which suppliers need to address. The difficult for newsagents is whether we have the will to engage with suppliers on these issues.
Magazines: Pay on scan based sales. This will stop us paying for theft. It will also make publishers and distributors more accountable for what they supply. The current model has little such accountability and small business newsagents carry a higher burden. I appreciate that paying newsagents only for scanned sales is a challenge. Let’s at least open a conversation and see where it takes us.
Greeting cards: Agreed pocket based KPIs. If a design fails an appropriate KPI and back end arrangements can make the publisher responsible.
Stationery: Buying 20%+ better than today. Newsagents need better stationery buying arrangements. If we cannot dramatically cut our buy price of stationery then we might as well get out of the game.
Newspapers: Reward based on success. I’d like to see publishers treat retail newsagents as business people. Reward us for growth and initiative which supports the masthead.
Home delivery: Open pricing of our services. Newsagents provide the service, carry the risk and carry the cost rises. It is a joke that they are not allowed to set their own fees. As long as the current arrangements continue publishers cannot expect newsagents to act as business people.
Retail: Put a price on our real-estate. We give for free across 4,000+ newsagencies what others charge for. We need to understand the value of this asset.
Vouchers: Transparent and competitive pricing. Newsagents have been dudded in this category previously. We need to make sur that deals negotiated on our behalf work for us and respect the breadth of our network.
My hour long presentation covered more than I have posted here in the last three posts. These are the points I think we need to consider around the issue of the newsagency of the future – before we actually plan for what our future looks like.
The key for me in all this is that newsagents break free from their past for it is our clinging to territories and old world practices which is stopping us from making our own future.
Tough decisions for newsagents (2)
Here is the second installment of tough decisions for newsagents which I covered in my presentation to the ANF Conference yesterday. Here are the store level tough decisions for newsagents as I see them.
Allocate space based on financial return. This may seem logical. It does not happen in newsagencies. Stores are often laid out by retail designers who have not been shown financial data to determine allocation.
Quit declining products before they hurt. Newsagents hang onto stock long after it is useful They need to quit old stock early.
Adding categories which fit your demographic. Newsagents need to forget the rules and play outside the square, chasing new opportunities which connect with their businesses.
Get serious about business. This is business after all. A newsagency is not a retirement fund. It is not a place to hibernate once you are made redundant. It is business and ought to be treated as such.
While the points in part 1 are bigger picture and have greater ramifications, these store level challenges are also important for newsagents.
Take the issue of allocating space on financial return. We get it wrong so often and allocate space because it is how it has always been. We get it wrong so many times.
Tough decisions for newsagents (1)
As part of my presentation at the ANF Convention yesterday I put on the table several tough decisions newsagents which I think need to address. I broke these down into network wide decisions, store level decisions and supplier related decisions. Here are the network wide tough decisions for newsagents as I see them.
Forget about territories. Newsagent commitment to territories is holding us back. It’s dark ages thinking. Unless we can ditch this we will run and be treated like second-class businesses.
Resolve the exit and entry conflict. We need to price our newsagencies for sale in a fairer way. Otherwise, we charge too much and leave incoming newsagents with a business which cannot support the price paid.
Drop the newsagency shingle. Is the term newsagent relevant any more? Maybe not. It ties us to our roots and since we have strayed so far from them maybe we stop calling our selves newsagencies and our businesses newsagencies. We are no longer agents after all.
Improve supply chain efficiency for us. Our supply chain is grossly inefficient at our end. We need to cut costs out so we can compete with others. We should stop pandering to out of date practices suppliers require us to follow such as paying freight on stock which we did not order and which has not performed.
There was more to the presentation than these points. I wanted to share them here to open a broader conversation on these points. Each is a challenge to our future. Each has the potential to block us growing.
Take the issue of territories. That newsagents still think in terms of territories is a major barrier to us thinking and acting as competitive business people. Territories were all but abolished in 1999 yet we cling to them in parts of our business sin a hope of protection. We are kidding ourselves.