It is VTAC Guide (a book listing tertiary courses) season in Victoria so we are using part of the dance floor to promote them.

Past experience tells us that we have a few days to move the bulk of the stock before sales slow to a dribble – history shows that between 75% and 80% of all stock is sold in the first week and the remainder over the next three months.

With something like the VTAC guide there is no point in being all that pretty – hence the trestle table stuck in this high traffic area. This approach gives the feeling of urgency and hence serves our goal this year to sell 200 to 300 within a week.

We have a display of stationery next to the VTAC Guide to attract add-on sales from people driven to us for the guide.

I’ve written here before about the frustration of some magazine freebies which are poorly stuck on covers and do more harm than good – the Boost Bar with Alpha ladst month was like this, falling off everywhere.

The free Bueno chocolate being given away this week with New Idea and Famous in some newsagencies is a well executed offer.

By providing the chocolate separate to the magazines makes for neater shelves. It also allows us to get the thanks when we give the customers the chocolate bar – this is a nice bonus.

Handing the chocolate personally certainly adds value to the gift and provides an opportunity for the customer to connect the gift more with the newsagency than if it were just stuck on. Everyone likes to feel special and this promotion works in with that.

New Idea is strong this week in stores I have seen thanks to its Diana series. The same is true of the Australian Women’s Weekly with its stunning Diana souvenir – I’d be surprised if it is not a sell out.

The extra traffic generated as a result is providing us with an opportunity to push the magazine club card and remind customers of our exclusive loyalty proposition.

I would be shocked if the August issue of the Australian Women’s Weekly (out yesterday) is not a sell out. It is one of the classiest magazines I have ever seen. The cover is sensational and the free DVD attached of Diana is excellent value.

Congratulations to everyone at ACP Magazines involved.

This issue has been on sale for one day and early indications are that it is a winner. We are supporting it with a feature display in store, a front of shop display and our usual waterfall display in our women’s magazine area. We saw it as key to go hard and go early with this.

While there have been plenty of Diana covers over the years, the quality of the AWW production and that it stands out visually from the usually noisy newsagent magazine shelves make this the tribute to collect.

Newsagents have received a letter from Horwitz Publications and Network Services committing to allocate quantities of Horwitz titles to ensure that supplies closely match expected sales. If this happens newsagents will cheer as it reflects a more appropriately tuned supply model – I expect supply to be on the basis of a target sell through rate of 70% or higher for anything less would not provide the return I am looking for.

Now if only all publishers and distributors would agree to such arrangements. It would be good for the environment.

I felt special to receive this Fortune Privilege Card – until I realised the card itself gave me nothing. It is a bit of froth to make me feel special enough to sign up for 68% off the cover price of purchasing Fortune at a newsagency.

The first publisher to engage commercially with newsagents and offer attractive deals for long term newsagent putaway commitment will realise the value of locking in loyal retail customers. While some will argue that the retail supply chain has a higher cost than the direct subscription model, I suspect that the cost is far lower than the 68% the publisher claims to give away with this Fortune offer.

Smart newsagents offer a professionally managed putaway service which includes SMS alerts to customers when their titles arrive, care for the titles so they are in mint condition when collected, barcode tracking of each customer’s copy when collected and up sell offers driven by the technology to help increase customer spend.

Newsagents are smarter and more capable in the magazine putaway area than these expensive and almost random mailings from publishers such as Fortune.

My message for publishers – work direct with me so, together, we can sell more magazines.

These are four of the hip hop / urban music titles we carry. At any point in time we have as many as eight. We usually receive one or two copies of each title. Sales are no more than one and often none. We request that titles are stopped and, eventually, they come back.

There is nothing unusual in what I have described – every newsagent could tell the same story.

These hip hop titles are a perfect example of why we need to collude to drive a better magazine supply model. While individuals request titles are stopped, the weak model allows titles back there or in another newsagency.

I understand that the distributors are working with the MPA on an agreed supply code. Unless newsagents control the titles which have access to their real-estate and labour asset problems will continue. We need to assert ourselves on this issue. The result would be, I suspect, greater success for the top selling titles and death for the very bottom end of the marketplace in all but newsagencies where these ultra specialist titles work extremely well.

Interesting to see UK wholesaler Smiths News testing the supply of a fixed range of titles with a group of independent retailers. Like Australian newsagents, independent magazine retailers in the UK complain about range creep where more titles are pushed into a category than warranted to service consumer demand.

The only way such an arrangement would work in Australia is if the magazine distributors agreed to work together to rules established by newsagents.