Daniel Kenny joined Tower Systems on Monday of this week to work out of our Brisbane office. Dan has spent time this week working behind the counter at our newsXpress Forest Hill store. I bought this newsagency in February 1996 to provide practical experience to me and the team at Tower as we pursued better software for newsagents. Daniel is the latest of many from the Tower Systems team to be trained at Forest Hill. Usually, new team members like Daniel have several stints at Forest Hill before we let them loose with clients. This practical experience augments the more formal training in our software and serves to provide valuable context for what we do.

Every few days I hear from a manufacturer, importer or some other supplier keen to access the newsagency channel. Some express frustration with existing supply chain access points while others are not aware of the various supply chains serving newsagents.

What is interesting to me is their keenness to connect with newsagents. They like our geographic spread and the traffic they see in our stores. Some of these potential newsagent suppliers have excellent products just waiting to connect with a strong national network of stores. The key is achieving that access at a low price so that everyone involves makes a fair return.

I have a standard approach which includes being transparent about the various channels to our stores: warehouses, distributors and the like.

The most exciting approaches come from people making products unlike any we have seen in newsagencies before yet which suit our customers and fit within existing categories. I appreciate that I am not being specific in detailing products – in many cases I agree to confidentiality so that appropriate arrangements can be negotiated.

It would be good for the industry to establish a supplier entry point and bring some structure to these approaches. While groups such as newsXpress can do it for its 110 members, there are some products which are more appropriate to mass roll out.

Being first has its rewards. Newsagents are choosing Tower Systems software because of a commercial advantage exclusively delivered months ago.

Earlier this year, following extensive testing, we released a live link from within our newsagency point of sale software for the sale of Dialtime phone recharge vouchers. This means that our newsagent clients can sell Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, 3 Mobile and Virgin mobile phone top up from any register in their store. They can also sell many different calling cards from their POS registers.

What is clever about this is that at the sales counter a newsagent employee can hit a couple of touch screen buttons and in a second or two the voucher with the recharge serial number is printed. Our software links real-time to Dialtime, transacts the voucher and delivers it to the receipt printer in the newsagency. We’re saving between 30 and 90 seconds a transaction. With some newsagencies doing between 50 and 100 transactions a day the time saving is significant.

The benefits for newsagents are that they no longer have to queue at the one Dialtime terminal at their counter for these sales and there is less room of data re-keying error. By integrating within our POS software, newsagents save time, enjoy the process more and are happy to sell more mobile phone recharge and calling card product.

This is another Tower Advantage for newsagents.

Folio Books at Bangkok airport is impressive. It uses its 70 sq metres very efficiently. I like the graduation in the ceiling and how the steps are used to position the offering.

I am in Bangkok on business and planned to get out tonight to take some photos of newsstands. Hotel security has been persuasive against it because of a high alert. It was odd getting searched checking into a hotel and the hotel’s own car being checked for bombs.

The newspaper and magazine marketplace over here is not as sophisticated as in Australia yet it is equally robust and sales driven. More later.