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independent retail

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.

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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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