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independent retail

Reflecting movement in the channel, there is a quiet shift occurring in newsagency software

Even though Tower Systems does not actively promote it’s newsagency software, it’s having a stellar year in welcoming newsagents switching to it.

Full disclosure: I started Tower Systems in 1981. I sold the business to Vela APX, part of the Constellation Group, in October 2024. I continue to work for the business today.

Newsagents are one of  twenty different specialty retail marketplaces Tower serves. While making up a sizeable chunk of the customer community, more new customers come from other marketplaces combined. But, and this is what’s interesting, newsagents stand out for the new customers added to the Tower community.

Looking at the many newsagents added this year, plenty are switching from other software. Quietly and consistently, newsagents are leaving the smaller software companies. I think this is happening for a couple of reasons: the software they are leaving has not kept up and the software businesses themselves have shrunk of retreated.

Software for retailers has gone through tremendous change over the last couple of years. Embedded AI tools are a game-changer for retailers saving time and helping them make more money, for real. Software without this fails the businesses.

The cost of maintaining software is considerable. While it’s easy to make noise about software innovation, it is another thing entirely to deliver.

Software companies that don’t keep their product fresh and commercially relevant often take the route of landing profitably. By this I mean they cut costs, retreat, and make money from customers who remain. This means reducing staff, moving to a lower cost space and banking more profit.

I have seen this in several retail marketplaces. I think it may be happening in the newsagency channel. I’m not critical of it, it makes sense for the business.

A vertical market software company focussed on small business customers needs, I think, 500 or more paying customers to remain commercially viable. That does not allow for the level of new feature development necessary in 2026 and beyond. There are software companies in the newsagency channel with considerably less than 500 customers.

I think what we are seeing here is unsurprising given the transition the newsagency channel itself is experiencing with store closures, the retreat of print from newsagents and newsagency business pivots.

Years down the track, if business degrees exist, they will look at the Australian newsagency channel as a case study.

In all of this change is opportunity. Change is when the nimble thrive. I know from a Tower perspective that the early adoption of AI and introducing embedded tools has been key to success. I know that in my own newsagency, early adoption of online sales has been the biggest factor in success. I know that there are newsagents today who don’t identify as newsagents because they pivoted and are more happy in their new incarnation.

This post is about change. We are in the middle of it. I think what’s happening with newsagency software is a reflection on that.

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newsagent software

What AI found in one shop’s sales file

I have been testing the newly announced newsXpress AI business performance analysis service with a few different shops and it is fascinating what it discovers, that the retailers love.

In each case, the retailer invested a few minutes to run a report and answer a couple of quick questions. The skilled and carefully prompted AI did the rest of the work.

What the retailer got back was immediately actionable, quickly money making.

One retailer found a new product category they had never considered, something they can trial for monomial cost but that, if it works as expected will be a game changer, that’s what they called it, a game changer.

Another retailer retail was direct: this is the kick up the arse I needed.

Another retailer didn’t believe the insights and advice. Two days later they came back saying they had done their own research and \had to apologise because the report was right. How could it know?, they asked. That’s the secret sauce here – discovering the unknown about local retail businesses and helping them make good decisions quickly.

Another retailer was amazed at the ToDo list. This would have taken me days to research and put together. That was weeks ago. The made half the changes and are already making more money as a result.

These are true stories that have come from the AI services that newsXpress is now offering to other retailers, not just newsagents.

This has changed how I see my business was the response from the most skeptical retailer we worked with. They thought AI was a gimmick and only became involved in the trial reluctantly..

None of this is magic, and none of it required new software. The numbers were sitting in the POS all along, the way they are sitting in yours right now. Every shop’s system quietly records what sells, when, at what margin, alongside what does not sell at all. What has been missing is not the data. It is the time and the tools to ask the data anything useful. AI has made the asking fast and cheap, if you know how to ask.

Teaching retailers how to ask is exactly what the AI training packs do, on your data, live and one on one. The snapshot is the free taste of it.

The offer stands this month: send a sales extract from your POS, any POS, and one page comes back showing what AI can see in your numbers. No charge, no obligation, and most owners are surprised by something on the page.

Start here: help@newsxpress.com.au.

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AI

Practical AI for newsagents and other independent retailers: a starter guide

AI is software you talk to in plain English. Type what you need and it types back – or tell it what you want through voice input. Most of the tools run in a browser, many cost nothing, and you do not need to be technical to use any of them. Here is how to put it to work in your shop this week.

Start with what is already in your POS software

The easiest AI to use is the AI with nothing to set up. For Tower Systems customers, the Retailer AI tools are built into the software, with no prompts to learn and no extra subscription. Because they were built for local retail, they already understand shop data.

They cover the jobs that quietly eat a retailer’s week. Product descriptions get drafted from basic item details, ready for your website. Supplier invoices arrive as PDFs and import automatically, with stock codes, costs and quantities filled in. Reorders can be generated on rules you set, for your review before anything is sent. An end of shift email summarises the day’s trading. Pricing can be checked against other retailers without you giving up an afternoon.

If you do nothing else from this guide, turn those on.

Three rules before you go further

Outside your POS software, the rules are short. Never paste customer names, emails, phone numbers or addresses into an external tool. Treat everything AI writes as a draft and edit it before anyone else sees it. And start with one task rather than ten: test it, judge the result, then add the next.

Which external tool

Start free. Free plans are enough for most retailers, and within a month you will know if you are hitting their limits.

Claude (claude.ai) is the strongest writer of the group and suits customer emails and planning. ChatGPT (chat.openai.com) is the general all-rounder for ideas and quick answers. Gemini (gemini.google.com) makes sense if your shop already lives in Google Workspace. Canva (canva.com) handles social media graphics, posters and shelf signage. Perplexity (perplexity.ai) answers research questions with sources you can check.

Paid plans run roughly $20 to $28 a month. Consider one only when you hit daily message limits or find yourself uploading documents regularly. One chat tool and one design tool is plenty.

Six things to try

Hand over the basic writing first. Social posts, promotion copy, signage. A prompt as plain as “Write a friendly Instagram post about our weekend candle sale at a small Melbourne gift shop, under 60 words” comes back usable in seconds.

Paste messy notes from a supplier call into a chat tool and ask for an action list for your team.

Let it draft replies to routine emails, the late order and the event invitation, then read and adjust before sending. The reading part is not optional.

Use it to brainstorm when the calendar looks quiet. Ask for ten Father’s Day ideas for your kind of shop and expect two or three good ones, which is a fair return on two minutes.

If your staff will use AI, write a one page policy. Say what is allowed, such as drafting and task lists, and what is banned, which is customer data and passwords. Anything public-facing gets a human read before it goes out.

Then, after thirty days, take stock. Did it save time? Did the emails get better? If something worked, add one more use. If something did not, drop it without guilt.

What to watch

AI states wrong things with complete confidence, so check prices, supplier terms and dates before they go anywhere near a customer. Make sure the words still sound like your shop and not a corporate template, and edit until they do. Keep passwords, financials and customer records out of public tools, always.

None of this is complicated. The retailers getting value from AI are not the technical ones. They are the ones who started.

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Newsagency management

For newsagents who want more than an average newsagency delivers

I have owned newsagencies since February 1996. In that time I have seen the best of this channel and plenty of the worst, and I understand why some newsagents feel stuck. The categories we were built on are in decline. Papers, magazines, lottery. That is not a criticism of anyone. It is arithmetic.

I also understand what stuck feels like, because newsagents describe it to me every week. You open early, you work hard, you do everything the old model says you should do, and the numbers drift backwards anyway. It wears people down. Some of the most capable retailers I know have quietly concluded that this is simply what owning a newsagency is now, and that the best they can hope for is a slower decline than the shop up the road.

I do not accept that.

Watching hundreds of these businesses up close has taught me that average is a choice. The newsagents doing it toughest are usually running the model as it was handed to them years ago. The ones enjoying their businesses, making good money and looking forward to Monday, are running something quite different, often from the same shop, on the same street, with the same landlord.

The difference is rarely luck or location. It is decisions. What to stock, what to quit, how to use the space, where new shoppers might come from. Made one at a time, with evidence, those decisions add up to a different business. I have watched a wall of slow magazines become the most profitable run of shelving in a shop, and shops attract customers who would never have crossed the threshold two years earlier. None of it happened overnight, and all of it started with one decision made on evidence rather than habit.

So where is the growth coming from? Not from the old categories. In the shops that are growing, the customer traffic, revenue and gross profit contribution growth is coming from categories traditional newsagents do not stock. This is where real innovation lies in our channel. The shops finding a brighter future are ranging products the traditional newsagency never considered, and they are being found by shoppers who never thought to walk in.

That belief is why newsXpress exists, and I should be upfront here: I own the business, so read what follows knowing that. What we offer members is hope backed by practical support. Hope on its own is just waiting. So the support is practical. We start by listening to what you want from the business, because that is different for everyone. With your permission we look at your data, and we almost always find early wins sitting in plain sight. From there we work beside you on a plan specific to your shop, your resources and your goals, at whatever pace suits you. Nothing is mandatory, and what you build stays yours.

There is also the company of others on the same road. Our members share what is working in their shops with a generosity that still surprises me after all these years. Nobody has to figure this out alone.

I will be honest about the other side too. If your plan for the business rests on newspaper home delivery, lottery commissions and parcel collection, we are probably not the right fit, and I would rather tell you that in the first conversation than take your money.

But if you are wondering whether there is a brighter future for your business than the one currently in front of you, I am happy to talk. No pitch and no obligation, just an honest conversation about your situation and what might be possible. Email me at mark@newsxpress.com.au or call me on 0418 321 338.

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newsagency of the future

“Support local” is a guilt trip, and it’s not working – are you wasting your time on it?

Walk down any street or go on social media and you’ll see the signs in the windows our read the words.

Support local. Shop small. Keep it in the community.

We say it to each other too and we say it to shoppers every chance we get.

It doesn’t work. It never has. I think a lot of us know that and keep doing it anyway, because it feels like we’re doing something.

The problem is what “support local” actually asks. It asks the customer to do you a favour. It puts your need in the middle of it, not theirs. Shop here because I need you to, because if you don’t I might not make it. Nobody wakes up wanting to prop up a struggling business. They wake up wanting a good card, a gift that works, a quick errand done well. You’re asking them to pay in guilt, and people don’t like paying in guilt.

It’s worse than just useless I think. It quietly tells the shopper you might be in trouble. It casts you as the underdog who needs a hand. That’s not a reason to come in. If anything it’s a reason to wonder how long you’ll be around. Are you looking for a pity party?

What does pull people in? The boring answer, and the true one. Being good at it.

Have the thing they actually came for. Know their name, and remember what they bought last time. Be quick when they’re in a rush and happy to chat when they’re not. Make the place a pleasure to walk into instead of a duty. People go back to shops that are good to them. They don’t go back out of pity. The few who come in once because they felt they should don’t come a second time.

Give them a reason that’s about them, not you. A range that’s worth the trip. Staff who know their stock cold. A shop that feels like a place rather than just a spot to hand over money. Do that and you never have to ask anyone to support local. They shop with you because you’re the better option, and they tell their mates, because people talk about a shop they love and nobody talks about a charity case they helped out.

Now the bit we don’t say out loud.

Plenty of the retailers shouting loudest about supporting local don’t do it themselves. Coffee from the drive-through chain. Printing ordered online because it was a few dollars cheaper. The weekly shop at one of the big two. Shopfittings, uniforms, the lot, bought from whoever came up first in a search, none of it from anyone nearby.

Walk into some of these shops and ask where they bank, where they buy their own gear, where they had lunch. The answer tells you the whole story. They want a loyalty they won’t hand over themselves.

Customers pick up on that. Maybe not in words, but they feel it. A shopkeeper who actually lives the line is convincing without a poster, because the whole shop runs on it. One who preaches it on the door and breaks it everywhere else is just another sign in a window.

So before you print the next poster, have a look at your own card statement. If you want a town where people choose the independent option, be that customer first. Spend up and down your own street. Use the local tradie, the local supplier, the cafe round the corner. Not out of guilt. Because it’s the world you keep saying you want, and you can’t ask anyone else to build it while your own money’s going somewhere else.

Be worth shopping at, and back the others having a go at the same thing. That’s the only version of supporting local I’ve ever seen actually work.

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Newsagency management

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.

…
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.

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Newsagency management

Not another boring EOFY post

No. Not from me.

You already know the required stuff. Run the stock listing, take the backup, ring the accountant. You’ve read that post a hundred times and you’ll read it a hundred more this week. I’m not adding to the pile.

What interests me today is the other list. The one you never write down. The jobs you keep meaning to get to and keep finding a reason not to. New financial year tomorrow, so it’s as good a night as any to stop dodging them.

Start with the dead stock. You know exactly what it is. You walk past it every day and your eye slides straight over it, because you stopped seeing it months ago. It’s been sitting there a year doing nothing. Mark it down hard, bundle it, give it away if that’s what it takes, but get it off the floor and put something that actually sells where it was.

Then have an honest look at your hours. Are you open at times nobody comes in, just because you always have been? In there from eight when the first real customer turns up at half nine? Trading Sundays for a figure that doesn’t cover the cost of being there? You can reorder stock. You can’t reorder the hours of your life, so spend them where they count.

The roster is the same question, and it’s a harder one because it’s about people you like. Are you rostering for the trade or for habit? Two on when one would cope? Be fair and be kind about it, but be straight with yourself about what each shift brings in.

Put your prices up. There, I’ve said it. You’ve been frightened of it for years, sure the customer will walk. Most won’t even notice. The few who do were never the ones keeping the lights on. You were never the cheap option and you were never going to win that fight, so stop pricing like you’re in it.

And bring in something mad, new. Something fresh, something with no business being in a newsagency, something that stops a regular in their tracks to ask what on earth it’s doing there. Back a hunch. Take the punt you’d usually talk yourself out of. Worst case, you mark it down next EOFY with the rest of the dead stock. At least you’ll know.

None of this is on the required list. That’s the whole point. Get one of these done and next year is genuinely better than this one, not just compliant.

So before you flip the calendar, pick one. Just the one. Be ruthless about it. Start the next when that’s sorted.

Happy new financial year.

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newsagency of the future

One sale, or three hundred newspapers

Sell a newspaper for $3.50 and you make about 12.5 per cent. That’s 44 cents in your hand. Sell a $250 item at 55 per cent and you make $137.50.

Do the division. One $250 sale is worth more than three hundred newspapers. You could sell a paper to every adult who walks past for a week and still not match what one good sale puts in the till.

We all know this. So why do we keep leaning on the 44 cents?

Because the paper is easy. The customer comes in, knows what they want, pays, leaves. No risk, no money tied up, nothing riding on your judgement. It feels like business because it’s busy. But busy isn’t the same as making money, and the newspaper proves that every single day.

The $250 sale is hard, and it’s hard in two ways we don’t talk about honestly.

You have to find the item first. That means backing your own read on a range, spending real money on stock that might just sit there, giving it decent space and light, and waiting. Some of it won’t work. You’ll buy the wrong thing now and then. That’s the price of playing in the part of the shop where the money actually is. The paper never asks any of that of you, which is exactly why it pays you 44 cents.

Then you have to find the shopper. And here’s the bit that stings. That shopper is already in your shop. They come in for the paper, or the lotto, or a birthday card. You see them twice a week. You know their name. It has just never crossed your mind that they’d spend $250 with you, because somewhere along the line you filed them as a paper buyer and left them there.

They’ve filed you too. Years of selling them a paper has taught them what you’re for. They don’t look at your good stock because they don’t think of you as the shop that sells it. So they buy the $250 thing somewhere else, from someone who bothered to see more in them than a paper sale.

That’s the real work. Not just buying the right product. Looking again at the people who are already in front of you, and shifting what they think you’re for.

The maths was never the hard part. The habit is.

Now, what is the gift item you sold was worth $1,500? yes, there are ‘newsagents’ doing this.

…
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.

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Newsagency management

Why men’s journals are worth space in your newsagency right now

Young men aged 18 to 40 are buying journals in growing numbers. Not diaries. Structured, guided journals built around habits, daily prompts, and goal-setting pages. They found the category through Stoicism podcasts, productivity YouTube channels, and communities built around self-discipline and mental health. Projects like Better health, Blokes Talk, men’s Shep and more speak top it. Local churches too.

Structured and guided formats now account for 54% of planner sales globally. Gen Z is 35 to 40% of that buyer base — well above where the industry expected them to be. The broader men’s wellness market is forecast to nearly double by 2030. Journaling is a small corner of it, which is exactly what makes it worth trialling. Low cost to test, no specialist range needed.

For a newsagency, there are two buying occasions worth understanding. The self-purchaser is deliberate. He checks paper weight, flips through the layout, and walks past a cheaper option that does not feel right. Matte black, charcoal, leather. Words like “focus”, “discipline”, “morning ritual”. He will pay $45 for a journal that suits him and ignore a $15 one that does not. Get the range right once and he comes back.

The gift buyer does not know the category but wants something that looks considered. A journal and pen together with a simple “Gift for him” sign does the job. She does not need to know anything else.

A small display near the counter — four to six SKUs, one pen, one leather sleeve, clean signage — is enough to find out whether it works in your store.

newsXpress provided its members a full brief on this category a while back, and it goes considerably further than what I have covered here. Merchandising detail, display headers, bundle pricing, paper specifications, what to avoid stocking and why. Built on market data and retail behaviour research. Not a supplier recommendation.

Finding new shoppers is the problem most independents are trying to solve. Categories like this one — real demand, accessible to trial, underserved by most newsagencies — are where that starts. The traditional product mix is not going to bring in people who have never had a reason to walk through the door.

If you are a newsXpress member, the full brief is in your member resources. If you are not a member and this is the kind of support you have been looking for, it is worth a conversation.

And, for what it’s worth, I know of a local retailer playing in this narrow segment and achieving $15,000+ a year in direct sales and more than double that if you consider what is added to the basket during the destination purchase.

It all comes down to whether you do want to attract new shoppers, or whether you are happy with things the way they are.

… Mark Fletcher is the CEO of newsXpress and founder of Tower Systems, a POS software company serving independent retailers across Australia. mark@newsxpress.com.au | 0418 321 338

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Newsagency opportunities

Is your newsagency remarkable?

Seth Godin wrote an excellent book — Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. It was (is) an excellent book, one I highly recommend. It applies today as much as it did in 2003 when it was published. The book inspired me, and it still does. The message is simple: you’ll notice a purple cow on the side of a hill because it stands out, it’s remarkable. The question for newsagents is: is your business remarkable, does it stand out?

Start with your front window.

Not your floor plan. Not your product mix. Not your loyalty programme. Your window. It is the one thing every person who walks past your store sees, and most newsagency windows are invisible. Not ugly. Not offensive. Just invisible. Generic. Expected. Easy to walk past without registering.

Is your window remarkable?

That is a missed opportunity, and it costs nothing to fix.

A remarkable window does not require a budget. It requires a decision to stop displaying what suppliers provide and start displaying what stops people. Those are different things. A supplier poster tells passers-by what you sell. A remarkable window makes them curious about who you are.

Think about what people do not expect to see in a newsagency window. A single unexpected object on a plinth. A handwritten question that makes someone pause. A display built around a local event, a local team, a local story. Something that changes every two weeks so the people who walk past every day have a reason to glance over.

The window is not an advertising space. It is a first impression. It is the thing that decides whether someone who has never been in before thinks your store is worth trying.

Most newsagency windows say: we sell a bit of this and a bit of that. Some say we sell newspapers, magazines, and lottery. Anybody walking past already knows that. You are not telling them anything they did not know, and you are giving them no reason to stop.

A window that shows something unexpected — something that does not fit the category assumption — plants a question. What is that? What kind of shop is this? I did not know they did that. That question is the beginning of a visit.

This is the lowest-cost, highest-visibility change available to any retailer. No supplier approval required. No capital outlay. No staff training. Just a willingness to put something in the window that people do not expect to see there.

Do it this today. Change it in a week. Yes, I know that’s work. It’s worth it! See what happens to the way people look at your store as they walk past.

Remarkable does not have to start big. It just has to start.

Go for that purple cow remarkable.

…
Mark Fletcher is the CEO of newsXpress and founder of Tower Systems, a POS software company serving independent retailers across Australia. mark@newsxpress.com.au | 0418 321 338

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newsagency marketing

What good foot traffic in a retail newsagency actually looks like in 2026

Foot traffic is one of those metrics newsagents talk about constantly but rarely define. When someone says their traffic is down, what does that mean exactly? Fewer people through the door? Fewer transactions? Smaller baskets? The same customers buying less?

The distinction matters because the response is different in each case.

Here is what I see in the businesses that are actually performing well right now. Their traffic story is not about volume. It is about who is coming in and what they are buying.

The old model is not coming back

The newsagency of 2010 ran on high-frequency, low-value visits. A paper every morning. A scratchie. A magazine. Frequent visits, small baskets, thin margin.

That traffic is declining structurally. Newspapers are bought online or not at all. Lottery players are being pushed to apps — deliberately, by the people who run the lottery. Magazine readers have moved on. You cannot run a campaign that fixes a habit change.

The businesses I respect have stopped trying to. They are building something different.

What the better businesses are doing

The stores growing right now attract less frequent but higher-value visits. A customer who comes in three times a year to buy gifts, cards, and a collectible is worth more to the business than one who comes in five days a week for a paper and nothing else.

That requires a different shop. The product mix has to give people a reason to come in when they are not running an errand. That does not happen by stocking what your rep suggested. It happens when you look at what your customers actually respond to and build around that.

Seasonal traffic compounds

Newsagents who take seasonal execution seriously — real displays, a genuine reason to visit around Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas — see something interesting. The spike visits convert. A customer who comes in for a card and finds a gift range they like comes back.

That repeat visit did not come from advertising. It came from having something worth discovering. You earned it.

The number worth watching

Stop asking whether your traffic count is up or down. Ask whether the traffic you have is getting more valuable.

Check your average transaction value over the past year. Look at whether repeat customers are growing as a share of your total. Ask yourself whether the people coming through the door are browsing or just transacting.

If those numbers are moving the right way, the business is in better shape than the foot count suggests. If they are not, the problem is almost certainly in the product mix and presentation — not in how many people walk past the window.

Volume is a vanity metric. Value is what you actually manage.

… 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.

7 likes
Newsagency management

A Sunday thought: back yourself

I spend a lot of words on this blog telling newsagents what to do. Cut this category. Chase that one. Review your card range. Watch your roster costs. Plenty of advice, week after week.

Today I want to say something different.

Back yourself.

You already know your shop better than anyone. Better than your suppliers, better than any consultant, better than me. You know which customers come in on pension day. You know which lines move and which ones sit there gathering dust while you tell yourself they will come good. You know, honestly, what you would change if you stopped putting it off.

That knowledge is worth more than you give it credit for.

I have been around this channel for decades, and the retailers I have seen thrive were rarely the ones with the best location or the deepest pockets. They were the ones who trusted their own judgement and acted on it. They tried things. Some failed. They tried something else. They did not wait for a supplier, a landlord or an industry body to save them, because nobody is coming to save any of us. That sounds bleak. It is actually liberating.

If you have been thinking about dropping a category that no longer earns its space, you are probably right. If you have been eyeing a product area that excites you, something you would enjoy selling, that enthusiasm is data too. Customers can tell when a shop owner loves what they sell. It shows in the displays, in the buying, in the conversation at the counter.

The shops growing in this channel right now do not look like the newsagencies of twenty years ago, and thank goodness for that. Every one of them got there because an owner decided their own instincts were worth acting on.

Doubt is part of running a small business. Anyone who tells you they have never lain awake over a decision is lying. But doubt is not a reason to stand still. It is the toll you pay for doing something that matters.

So here is my Sunday encouragement. Make the change you have been sitting on. Start small if you need to. Measure it. Adjust. You have survived in one of the toughest corners of retail, through structural decline, a pandemic and everything since. That is not luck. That is you.

Back yourself. You have earned the right.

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Social responsibility

Beyond the hype: why I travelled to Singapore for SuperAI

Today, I am at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore for the opening day of SuperAI, Asia’s largest AI conference. Over the next two days, some of the most influential people working in technology will be here. Actually, it kicked off yesterday with some side sessions that were terrific.

I want to be clear about why I made the trip.

This was not tech tourism. It was not about watching demos of products that will not ship for three years. It was a practical decision driven by a straightforward observation: for anyone running or supporting a small business retail network right now, understanding where AI is headed has stopped being optional.

The conversation has shifted

What made SuperAI worth the flight is that this conference has moved on from where most AI events still are. Frontier lab demonstrations and theoretical research discussions are elsewhere. Here, the focus is on real-world deployment — how organisations are running AI tools at scale, what is working operationally, and what the actual results look like on the ground.

In local retail, we are already seeing tangible results. I am in my shop. Plenty others are too.

Automated invoice processing is saving small businesses hours of manual data entry every week. AI-driven inventory insights are surfacing patterns that would never appear in a standard report. These are not pilot projects. They are running in shops now.

But we have barely started.

What I am here to find

Being here gives me a clearer view of what is coming before it arrives. Three areas I am focused on across the two days:

  • Inventory autonomy — how autonomous agents are predicting stock trends, managing supply chain variability, and cutting dead stock without requiring specialist skills to operate
  • Accessible data insights — how complex business analysis is being simplified so a local shop owner gets deep, actionable information without needing a data analyst to interpret it
  • Operational efficiency — which tools are removing friction from back-office administration so independent retailers spend less time on screens and more time on the floor

Why this matters for local retail

The tools demonstrated at events like this do not stay at the enterprise level. They filter into the software platforms small businesses use every day. The gap between what a large retailer can do with data and what an independent newsagent or gift shop can do is closing faster than most people realise.

Being here on day one means seeing what is coming before it lands. That lead time is the point. The goal is to bring what is genuinely useful home and turn it into something practical for local businesses — not eventually, but as soon as it is ready.

… Mark Fletcher is the CEO of newsXpress and founder of Tower Systems, a POS software company serving independent retailers across Australia.

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2026

Be Careful What You Buy Right Now

I want to say something plainly to newsagents who are buying new ranges over the coming weeks, whether at trade shows or through rep visits.

Some suppliers in this channel have not caught up with what is happening. They are pitching stock sourced at last year’s prices. That stock is arriving in Australia with this year’s freight costs baked in. The margin you think you are buying is not the margin you will actually get.

FOMO is the oldest sales tool there is. A rep will tell you this range is selling hard in other stores, that you will miss the season if you do not order now. Some of that will be true. Most of it cannot be checked in the room, which is the point.

Ask for evidence before you commit. Which stores are performing with this product? What does the sell-through data look like? What happens if it sits on your shelf? Vague answers mean the pitch is not ready to become a purchase order.

Here is something worth remembering: every sales person who walks into your store has a target. Your order helps them hit it. That is their interest in the transaction. Whether the product sells through in your store is entirely your problem once the invoice is signed.

Freight costs have shifted significantly. Products sourced offshore last year are landing now at higher costs. Some suppliers have absorbed that. Others have passed it on quietly through margin compression or reduced pack values. You will not know which category you are dealing with until after the sell-through.

Buy tight. Buy what your customers are already asking for. Buy what you are confident will sell within sixty days. Do not buy on a rep’s enthusiasm, on manufactured urgency, or on the hope that your store will perform the way another store did.

Your cash flow runs your business. Guard it.

…
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.

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Newsagent suppliers
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