30 More Newsagents Are Decoupling From the Channel. Here Is What That Looks Like
Another 30 newsagents are actively working to decouple from the newsagency channel right now.
They are changing their business names, adjusting their product mix, deliberately relying less on legacy products for the future of their businesses.
This is not talk. It is work underway, in shops, right now.
For transparency: these are all newsXpress businesses, and plenty attended our recent conference in Perth, which focussed on decoupling. I am a Director of newsXpress, so read this post with that in mind.
The numbers are the numbers though, and I think they matter to anyone in this channel.
Thirty businesses moving at once is significant. In my experience, change in this channel usually happens one hesitant shop at a time. What we are seeing now is different. It is a group of retailers who have looked at the same evidence, reached the same conclusion, and started the same journey within weeks of each other.
The evidence is what I laid out in Perth. The data points to the traditional newsagency channel having less than ten years left. Papers, magazines and the other legacy lines that once defined these shops are in structural decline. That is not pessimism. It is arithmetic. And pretending otherwise helps nobody.
Decoupling is the response. Personally, I think it is essential.
It means separating the future of your business from the future of the channel. Becoming the best card and gift destination in your area, or the best of whatever you choose, rather than the local newsagency that also sells some gifts. And, what you choose can be anything, since you are not constrained by shingle expectations.
For the 30 businesses on this path, the work is practical. A new name that says what the shop is becoming, not what it was. Floor space rebalanced toward products that earn their keep. New traffic created through categories and marketing the shop controls, rather than traffic inherited from products in decline. It is roughly a two year job, done properly.
What encourages me most is the mindset. These retailers are not waiting for the channel to be saved. They are not waiting for a supplier, a distributor or a government to fix things. They are backing themselves.
I think we will look back on this period as the moment the smart end of the channel stopped identifying as newsagents and started building what comes next.
If you own a newsagency and this resonates, the first step costs nothing. Look at your sales data. Work out how much of your gross profit is controlled by others. Then decide whose future you want your business tied to. Theirs, or yours.
Footnote: The reality is that it is likely there are more than 30 newsagency businesses decoupling right now. The thirty I mention here are the ones I know about.