New Year New You: Stop Watching a category decline that you built your shop on
Watching a category shrink is a slow kind of frustration. Not overnight. Gradually, a few titles at a time. Fewer customers asking. Numbers that used to feel unremarkable now feel like something worth explaining at the end of the month.
For most newsagents, that category is magazines. For some, newspapers. For others, lottery products, as customers move to buying online. The specifics differ. The feeling is familiar.
The question is not whether the decline is real. It is what happens to the floor space, the margin budget, and the foot traffic that category used to carry.
The instinct is to hold on
Magazines once drove daily foot traffic. Newspapers brought customers in before 8am. These were not minor parts of the business — they shaped the layout, the staffing, the rhythm of the day.
Protecting what built the shop makes sense. But holding floor space for a shrinking category has a real cost. Every metre could be working harder.
What is actually working in newsagency businesses right now
Greeting cards are probably the best example. Customers still want to buy them in person, and a well-curated section with decent replenishment consistently performs. The category does not get talked about much but it delivers.
Gifts and homewares have become a genuine revenue contributor for many stores, particularly where the range is local, seasonal, or hard to find online. Not generic gifts — product the owner chose because they know the customer walking through the door.
Stationery (smart stationery especially), arts and crafts, and activity products have a much bigger audience than they did five years ago. That shift is still underexploited in a lot of stores.
Advice on making the shift
Rebalancing a shop is not a quick fix. It means rethinking the floor plan, finding new suppliers, and testing product lines that may not work before you land on ones that do.
The first move is usually to reclaim the space rather than fill it. Look at which sections are underperforming per square metre. Reducing a magazine section from 12 bays to eight can free up real floor without dropping the category.
After that, test small. A limited range, careful sell-through tracking, then let the numbers guide the next order. Filling space with volume before knowing what the customer actually wants is an expensive habit that is easy to fall into.
If your POS system is not clearly showing you what is turning and what is sitting, that is worth fixing before any buying decisions. The data is there — it just needs to be used.
And talk to other newsagents. The community shares information more openly than most retail sectors. What is working two towns over may be exactly what is missing from your range.
If you;re in a marketing group, start there – they should be all over this and giving you actionable practical help. Are they?
The shops struggling did not decline because the category did
They delayed the response. The ones doing well moved earlier, tested more, and were willing to look different from what they used to be.
A newsagency does not have to be defined by what it sold in 2005. The customers are still there. The question is whether the shop gives them a reason to walk in.
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Mark Fletcher founded newsagency software company Tower Systems and is the CEO of newsXpress, a marketing group serving innovative independent retailers, including newsagents, who continuously evolve their businesses to be enjoyable, relevant and successful. You can reach him on mark@newsxpress.com.au or 0418 321 338.