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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

Most newsagents are giving their best space to their worst-performing departments

This post promotes a service my business sells. Read it with that in mind, and judge it on whether the argument holds.

Here is the argument.

The typical newsagency floor was laid out for a business that no longer exists. Newspapers and magazines got the front, the window, the walk from the door to the counter, because that was what people came in for. Print bays have been shrinking for fifteen years. In most stores the space they hold has not shrunk anywhere near as fast.

Now, while you may have made some changes, most I see are not enough for a bright future.

Meanwhile cards, gifts, stationery, art and craft, collectables, plush and the newer categories are squeezed in around the edges. They earn their keep in poor positions, which is exactly why they are worth more space. A category performing from a bad spot is telling you something.

I see this constantly. Not because newsagents are careless, but because layout changes slowly. Nobody wakes up and decides to hand prime real estate to a declining category. You take out one bay, then another, then you shuffle a fixture, and five years later the shop is a compromise between what it used to be and what it is becoming.

The numbers most newsagents never see side by side

Two figures per department. The share of your selling space it occupies, and the share of your sales and gross profit it returns.

Almost nobody has these two figures next to each other. Yet the gap between them is the single most useful number in a newsagency, because it tells you where your rent is being wasted.

There is a second pattern I look for, and it is the one that worries me most.

Revenue flat, transaction count down.

I see it constantly in this channel now. Revenue holds because prices rose and because lotto and agency lines carry a dollar value. Underneath, fewer people are walking through the door. Foot traffic is the whole basis of a newsagency, and when it goes, everything built on it goes with it, usually about two years after the owner could have acted.

You cannot see this in one year of data. It shows up plainly in two.

What newsXpress is offering

A Store Opportunity Review. Send two years of sales data from your POS software and a sketch of your shop showing what is located where. That is all.

It comes back as a written report — how your two years compare on revenue, transactions, average sale, items per sale and department performance; how your space allocation stacks up against what each area actually returns; research on your local area and who is in it now; and research on the category opportunities that suit your catchment. Opportunities listed in the order I would tackle them.

Three business days. Then a follow-up consultation with the retail professional who wrote it, included.

$595 inc GST. $395 inc GST until the end of September. Prepaid to qualify you. And you know what, since I own newsXpress, if the report you receive is of no value to you whatsoever, let me know and I will refund your payment.

It is open to any local retailer, not just newsXpress members and not just newsagents. Gift shops, bookshops, jewellers and homewares stores face the same space and margin questions.

help@newsxpress.com.au.

Why I think it matters more in this channel than any other

Because newsagents are running out of runway, and space is the lever they still control.

You cannot fix print decline. You cannot negotiate lottery terms. You cannot stop a masthead closing or a distribution frequency changing. What you can do is decide what occupies the best two metres of your shop, and most newsagents are making that decision by inheritance rather than by evidence.

The stores I see doing well in 2026 are the ones that stopped waiting for the old model to stabilise and started treating themselves as retailers with a good site. The layout usually changed before the results did.

And the honest caveat

A report will not save a shop in the wrong location on the wrong lease with the wrong rent. Nothing will, and I would rather tell you that in the follow-up call than take your money and pretend otherwise.

But if the business is fundamentally sound and simply arranged for a version of itself from a decade ago, this is a cheap way to find out what to move and what to back.

Draw the sketch badly. It is the part I find most useful.

To kick this off, email help@newsxpress.com.au.

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Newsagency management

When you consider EFTPOS rates: who makes money off each sale you make

Retailers are starting to be pitched new post October 1 EFTPOS payments processing offers.

My advice is be careful.

Make sure you know who will make money from your decision.

Every dollar taken across the counter has more hands on it than most retailers realise.

Depending on the point of sale software in use, the software company may be taking a percentage of each sale.

Depending on how payments are set up, a payments provider is almost certainly taking a slice of every card transaction.

And some leases include a turnover clause, where the landlord takes a percentage once sales pass an agreed threshold.

Plus, there so sometimes a clip to be made by the party proposing a payments provider to you.

Make you know who will make money from each transaction you process and how much they will make.

None of those third parties, the POS company or the promoter of a payments offer, are doing the work in your business. The retailer is out there every day, bringing customers in, working the floor, and grinding out the sales. The fees come off regardless.

That is why the question is worth asking properly. Who makes money off the transactions in this shop, and how much?

Payments are singled out as the most actionable place to start. The goal is a payments arrangement at the lowest possible cost. A retailer paying less than the shop down the road is already ahead of it, on every single sale, without selling one extra item.

A cost plus model is a good situation. There is where the payments company charges you their actual cost and an agreed margin for themselves. This pricing is lean, focussed and transparent.

There is a timing point too.  From October 1 there is a direct hit to margin rather than something passed on. Getting those costs down now is the practical response.

Ask tough questions. List every party earning something from a transaction, put a number against each, then work through them one at a time. The individual savings look small. They are fractions of a sale. Those fractions add up quickly across a trading year.

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Newsagency management

Stop! Is that mountain with riches at the top waiting for you worth it?

I keep seeing the same ads. People selling scale. Courses, seminars, mentorships at a few hundred dollars a month. That is what this video is about, because I have had enough of the pitch.

You know the look. The bright new car. The house they bought for mum and dad. Dinner at some restaurant in Europe. It is all there to sell you the idea that the same life is waiting, if you just pay for the secret.

Here is what bothers me. Those ads are built to make you feel bad about a business that is already working. There is no guarantee attached. The money only moves one way, and it is not towards you.

My argument is simple. A profitable, well run local independent shop can give you more than a scaled one ever will. Scale has costs the marketing never mentions. The money, sure. But also the worry, the hours, and the control you hand over to other people. I have watched retailers chase scale and lose plenty. I have watched others stay local and do very nicely.

So what actually works? Be careful with every dollar you put into the shop. Decide on facts, not on a hunch. Make mistakes and get on with it. Fail early, fail often, learn each time.

One more thing. We are economic champions in this country and almost nobody says it out loud. The media certainly does not. So say it to yourself at the end of the day. You traded today. You will open again tomorrow. You like the work and you met some good people doing it. Sit with that for a minute. It counts.

If you are banking money and you are happy, you do not need someone charging you to tell you to want more.

Try and ignore the noise from the scale promoters because, in reality, they are only promoting themselves as they want to scale. Too many of them genuinely care less about you, no matter how slick their pitch.

As always, buyer beware.

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Ethics

Sales Rep Visits In-Store Are a Waste of Time in Most Cases I Think

How long do you give a sales rep who wants to meet to pitch a new range? I give them none. Send it to me in an email instead.

That’s not me being rude. It’s a decision I made after noticing how much time these visits were eating, and how little most of them changed what I actually stock. Twenty minutes here, forty there, add it up over a month and it’s a working day gone, mostly on ranges I was never going to take.

An email pitch has to work harder, and that’s the point. If you want my shelf space, tell me:

  • What the range actually is, in a few lines, not a slideshow. If it takes ten minutes to explain, it’ll take my customers longer to understand.
  • The evidence behind any claim you’re making, sales data, a case study, something I can check. “Retailers love it” isn’t evidence.
  • Who the target shopper is, specifically, not “everyone.”
  • How this range gets me in front of shoppers I’m not already reaching. Recycling the same faces already through my door doesn’t count.

A rep standing in my shop can talk around all four of those. An email can’t hide as easily, and it doesn’t cost me the time it takes to be polite while it happens.

Something else: a lot of rep visits are social, on purpose.

Reps and the companies behind them know retailers often buy from people they like, and that this counts for more in the decision than it should. A friendly half hour costs them nothing and buys a lot of goodwill, goodwill that shows up later as shelf space the product hasn’t earned.

So the question worth asking yourself: how much time do you actually spend with sales reps in an average month? And when did you last sit down and work out whether that time is buying you better ranges and more sales, or just buying the rep goodwill at your expense?

If you haven’t audited it, that’s the exercise. Not every visit is wasted, some earn their keep, but you won’t know which until you actually look.

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Newsagency management

Your Google Business Profile in 2026: what’s changed, what’s still true, and one thing to fix

This advice first went to newsXpress members 3 years ago. It went to ALNA members after that. I’m sharing an updated version here to reach more newsagents, because I went back and checked it against Google’s own current guidelines and against what’s actually changed since it was written. Most of it holds up. One part of it doesn’t, and it’s worth fixing today.

It’s still free. It still takes a few minutes, not a consultant. And local search still converts better than almost anything else you can do with your time.

Why this is still worth doing

Roughly 46% of all Google searches carry local intent, and some 2026 estimates put that closer to 50%. Of the people who run a “near me” style search, 76% visit a business within 24 hours, and 28% of local searches end in a purchase. Local search is mobile-heavy too: around 70% of these searches happen on a phone. A complete, active Google Business Profile is how you show up in that moment.

One thing to fix: your categories

Here’s the part of the original advice that needs correcting. It said to select as many categories as apply to your business, on the basis that retailers too often pick just one. Google’s own current guidelines say the opposite: choose the fewest categories it takes to describe your core business, as specifically as possible, and don’t add categories just to cover more search terms.

Categories aren’t a keyword list. They’re meant to answer “what IS this business,” not “what does it sell.”

If your profile has picked up five or six categories over the years to catch every possible search, it’s worth trimming back to the two or three that most specifically describe what you are. A newsagency that also sells gifts and cards is still a newsagency, just with specific, accurate secondary categories, not a business wearing every hat in the shop.

What’s changed since this was first written

Posting no longer requires a third-party tool. Google Business Profile now has scheduling and recurring posts built directly into the posting screen: set a post once, choose “weekly” or a custom pattern, and Google keeps publishing it for you. Tools like Loomly, Sendible or OneUp still work fine if you’re already using them, but they’re no longer the only way to plan ahead.

The business description limit is 750 characters, not 750 words. Google displays roughly the first 250 characters before a customer has to tap “read more,” so put the important information first. Google’s guidelines also ask that the description itself not read like an advertisement: no “everything on sale” or price call-outs. Save the sales pitch for your posts, and use the description to say plainly what you are and what you offer.

Posts can technically run up to about 1,500 characters, but the data on what actually gets read and clicked favours something much shorter, well under 300 characters, closer to a tight paragraph than a full page. If you’ve been writing longer posts, trimming them will likely help rather than hurt.

What hasn’t changed

Posts still archive after six months, same as when this advice was first written, and profiles with something posted in the last week or so are the ones that show up looking active. That’s the real reason to keep posting weekly rather than setting and forgetting. Hashtags still do nothing on Google posts, so don’t bother. And the core advice against handing this over to a marketer or a friend still stands: you know your shop and your customers, and that’s worth more here than someone else’s template.

New this year: Gemini can now help run your profile

The one genuinely new development since last year is that Google connected Gemini directly to Business Profile, for single-location owners, from June 2026. Once connected, you can ask it things in plain language: how did my business do this month, help me respond to this review, or post something about our new stock this week. It can draft, and you can edit before anything goes live.

This doesn’t change the advice about doing this yourself rather than outsourcing it. Gemini is a tool you point at your own knowledge of your shop, not a replacement for it. It’s worth trying, particularly for retailers who found the interface itself the biggest barrier to getting started.

The short version

Set up or claim your profile if you haven’t. Pick the fewest, most specific categories that describe your business, not the most. Write a plain, accurate 750-character description with the important part up front. Post about one product a week, with a photo, in a couple of short sentences rather than a couple of paragraphs. Keep doing it yourself.

It still costs nothing, and it’s still one of the highest-return things a small retailer can do this year.

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Newsagency management

How Many Newsagencies Are There in Australia? Industry Size & Store Numbers

There are roughly 2,500 local newsagency shops operating in Australia in 2026, and the newsagency industry is worth about $1.8 billion in annual revenue.

Now, some will disagree with this number so I want to explain how I reached 2,500. I considered the data I have access to from the Tower Systems dataset (Tower is the biggest software company serving the channel) as well as insights from the major magazine distributor and my own decades of experience working with newsagencies and my tracking of store closures over the lats 10 years.

Store numbers have fallen from just under 5,000 in 2000, but the surviving network is substantial and, in transformed stores especially, healthy.

Counting is imprecise because agencies, sub-agencies and standalone lottery agents can sometimes be lumped together. This page sets out the size of the Australian newsagency industry — revenue, store numbers, employment and the long-term trend — with sources, so you can see where the commonly quoted figures come from and why they differ.

Australian newsagency industry: key numbers (2026)

Measure Figure Source
Industry revenue (2025–26) ~$1.8 billion IBISWorld6
5-year revenue trend Declining ~5.2% a year IBISWorld
Number of businesses (IBISWorld count) ~1,750–1,784 IBISWorld
Number of local newsagency shops (industry estimate) ~2,500+ ALNA / Tower7
Broader lottery + retail + distribution agents 4,000+ ALNA (ACCC)8
People employed ~15,800–20,000 VANA / ALNA9

References:

  1. IBISWorld, Newsagencies in Australia, https://www.ibisworld.com/australia/industry/newsagencies/5495/
  2. Mediaweek, ABC report that newsagency sector in decline, https://www.mediaweek.com.au/abc-report-that-newsagency-sector-in-decline-fails-to-investigate-closures-claims-retailer/
  3. ALNA, Australian Lottery and Newsagents’ Association ACCC submission (April 2018), https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Australian%20Lottery%20and%20Newsagents’%20Association%20(April%202018).pdf
  4. VANA, newsagency industry statistics, https://www.vana.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Newsagency-industry-Statistics.pdf

Why the store-count figures disagree

Estimates of how many newsagencies exist in Australia range from about 1,750 to over 3,000. The gap is real and comes down to definitions:

  • IBISWorld counts registered businesses in the newsagencies industry classification: around 1,750–1,784.
  • ALNA and POS software providers count operating retail newsagency outlets: 2,500 or more, described as the biggest independent retail channel in Australia. This is the number that I consider to be most accurate as it is from on the ground experience.

Broader agent counts (including sub-agencies, distribution agents and standalone lottery agents) push past 4,000.

A retailer with a lottery terminal, an Australia Post agency and a magazine account can look like a newsagency without being classified as one — which is why headline “decline” numbers should be read with care.

The long-term trend in store numbers

Year Estimated newsagencies
2000 ~5,000
2007–08 ~4,635
2016–17 ~3,150
2026 ~2,500 (operating shops)

Long-term decline in newsagency numbers. Historical figures via Wikipedia; current operating estimate via ALNA / industry sources.10

The direction is clear — fewer stores over 25 years — but the network that remains is significant. Australian newsagents still sell close to half of all magazines sold in shops and around a third of all greeting cards sold nationally.

Is the newsagency industry dying?

No, it is transforming. Industry revenue is declining (around 5.2% a year through 2025–26 on IBISWorld’s measure, which I think is problematic) because legacy categories like newspapers, magazines and tobacco are shrinking, and even lottery sales are moving online (40%+ now direct to consumer).

Transformed newsagencies — those leaning into gifts, cards, specialty stationery and emerging lines — are growing revenue and basket value. The decline is concentrated in stores that have not changed their model.

Frequently asked questions

How many newsagencies are there in Australia in 2026?

There are roughly 2,500 operating local newsagency shops in Australia. IBISWorld counts around 1,750–1,784 registered newsagency businesses; industry bodies count 2,500 or more retail outlets, and over 4,000 when broader lottery and distribution agents are included.

How big is the Australian newsagency industry?

The Australian newsagencies industry is worth about $1.8 billion in revenue in 2025–26, according to IBISWorld, and has been declining at around 5.2% a year over the past five years.

How many people do newsagencies employ in Australia?

10Wikipedia, Newsagent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsagent

newsagencyblog.com.au • Page 8 of 9

Estimates range from about 15,800 to 20,000 people, depending on whether broader lottery and distribution agents are included.

Are newsagencies in decline?

Store numbers and industry revenue are falling, driven by declines in print, tobacco and in-store lottery sales. However, transformed newsagencies focused on gifts, cards and specialty lines are growing, so the decline is uneven rather than universal.

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newsagency of the future

Collins Debden has a journal range that works for the male journalling opportunity

I’ve been talking a while about the male journalling opportunity: young guys 15 through 35 who are journalling more now than ever.

Anyway, here is a new video from me about a terrific range from Collins Debden: https://youtu.be/aP4dyCswFGU

Now, if the opportunity of selling journals to young guys is new to you, here’s more context:

Journaling has shed its old image. It’s now widely treated as part of a healthy lifestyle, and one of the fastest-growing groups taking it up is younger men, roughly aged **18 to 35**.

AFL footballers are journaling and talking about it openly. Olympians describe it as part of how they manage performance. Outside sport, plenty of people talk about journaling as a mental health tool and a way to build a steady daily routine. Whatever’s driving it, the trend is real, and it’s showing up in what customers are asking for at the counter.

## Why structure matters for a first-time journaller

Handed a blank notebook, most people freeze after the first page. What gets someone journaling regularly isn’t a nicer cover. It’s a bit of structure to work from until the habit sticks.

Collins Debden has built a range around exactly that idea, called Jumble. It includes titles such as Routines, Doze, Passion, Flex, Thankful and Believe, each built around a single clear theme.

Take the Passion journal as an example. Once the marketing slip comes off, the layout does the work. There’s space to sum up the week in one word, simple prompts with small icons to circle covering how the week felt, the hurdles overcome, the ways people supported each other, and a favourite memory, then open space for free notes alongside.

Routines follows the same logic from a different angle. It asks for a main goal for the week, the steps to reach it, weekly habits to track, and a quick read on mood and energy. Both journals, like the rest of the range, come with a sticker sheet.

A little scaffolding at the start makes it far more likely the habit sticks, and that’s really the whole idea behind the range.

## Why this is worth stocking

Collins Debden is an established international publisher of diaries and journals, and the Jumble range is a solid place to start for any retailer looking to serve the male journaling market. It gives a first-time journaller somewhere obvious to begin, rather than a blank book and good intentions.

It’s also worth talking about on social media. Local men’s sheds, mental health groups and community organisations are exactly the kind of audience who’ll want to know these journals are stocked nearby, and a short post is often enough to put your shop on their radar.

To find out more about opportunities like this, get in touch with the team at help@newsxpress.com.au.

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Newsagency opportunities

Why newsagents can’t afford to run old software anymore

Software security has changed more in the last eighteen months than in the previous five years, and small retailers, like newsagents, are squarely in the firing line.

Newsagents handle sensitive data: EFTPOS transactions, lottery and gift card sales, loyalty accounts, customer details. Running old software is a commercial risk to your business and to the people who shop with you.

What’s changed

Cyber criminals have worked out that small businesses are easier targets than large ones, and just as valuable.

According to the Australian Signals Directorate’s Annual Cyber Threat Report for 2024–25, the average cost of a cyber incident to a small business rose 14% to $56,600. The ACSC’s cyber security hotline took more than 42,500 calls that year, up 16% on the year before, and the agency issued over 1,700 warnings about malicious activity targeting Australian organisations, an 83% jump. Read the full report.

Payment security rules have tightened. PCI DSS 4.0, the standard that governs how businesses handle card payments, made a set of new requirements mandatory from April 2025, including multi-factor authentication for anyone accessing systems that touch card data. If your POS provider hasn’t talked to you about this, it’s worth asking.

Attackers are going after software supply chains too. Industry research on retail breaches found close to a third involved a compromised third-party vendor rather than a direct attack on the retailer, nearly double the rate from the year before. A weakness in a POS provider, a payments processor, or an IT support company can expose every retailer connected to them.

And a lot of small business software is older than it should be. Security researchers still find point-of-sale systems running operating systems that stopped receiving security patches years ago, because “it still works” felt like a good enough reason to leave it alone. Unsupported software is an open door. Nobody is watching for weaknesses in a system the vendor stopped maintaining, and attackers know it.

The businesses ransomware groups target most aren’t the ones with the least valuable data. They’re the ones with the least resistance.

Why this matters more for newsagents specifically

Most newsagents have grown beyond newspapers and magazines. Gift cards, loyalty programs, mobile recharge, lottery accounts and card payments all run through the same till, and all of it depends on software that’s connected to the internet, connected to your bank, and often connected to a support provider with remote access to your systems. That’s real exposure. It’s a profile attackers look for: valuable transactions, limited in-house IT support, and a temptation to delay updates because the shop is busy and the software “still works fine.”

What keeping software up to date means

Keeping software current is more than clicking “update” when a pop-up appears. A few questions worth putting to your POS provider or IT support:

  • Is your point-of-sale software still actively supported, with regular security patches, or is it running on an older version the vendor no longer maintains?
  • Is multi-factor authentication switched on for anyone who can access your systems remotely, including your support provider?
  • How quickly does your provider apply security patches after they’re released, and do they tell you when they do?
  • Are your backups tested, and stored somewhere separate from your main system, so a ransomware attack on your till doesn’t take your records with it?

A short checklist for your shop

None of this requires becoming a cyber security expert. A few habits make most of the difference:

  • Turn on multi-factor authentication on every account that offers it, not just your bank login.
  • Keep the operating system and browser on any device connected to your POS current.
  • Treat unexpected “urgent” emails about supplier invoices or EFTPOS settings with suspicion, and verify by phone before acting.
  • Back up your data regularly, and keep at least one copy separate from your main system.

Treat your POS software the way you’d treat your shop’s front door: locked, current, and not something you put off dealing with because business is busy. The retailers who get hit hardest are usually the ones who assumed it wouldn’t happen to a shop their size.

Now, here are some valuable sources:

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Newsagency management

The sale that walked out the door

A customer walks into a local shop looking for NeeDoh, one of the best-known names in sensory play. Out of stock. The assistant holds up a generic off-brand substitute when asked of they have NeeDoh.

No but, we have these off-brand products.

Right next to that substitute, on the same shelf, sits a full range of Crazy Aaron’s Putty, a premium brand that does exactly what Nee-Doh does. They don’t point it out. The don’t ask what the customer actually wants, or offers to let them try it.

If you’d rather head about this, here’s a video that I made today reflecting on the experience.

The shopper turns and leaves with nothing

The shop has lost a sale it didn’t need to lose.

Why how we engage matters

Shoppers rarely walk into a local store for one planned purchase. They browse, and they react to whatever catches the eye. People buy sensory and novelty lines for all sorts of reasons: arthritis relief, sensory needs, or just something to fidget with at a desk.

That’s exactly why these products deserve better than a spot near the counter as an afterthought. Stock the brands people recognise, know the range, and be able to talk about it like you mean it. That’s what turns a browser into a buyer.

What went wrong

A team that doesn’t know its stock, its trends, or its alternatives well enough to mention them naturally will lose sales like this one and never notice it happened.

An out-of-stock answer with no real alternative can be enough to lose a customer for good, along with every repeat visit and word-of-mouth recommendation that would have followed.

Independent retailers compete on service. Every interaction either builds the relationship or ends it, and there’s rarely a moment in between.

What good service looks like instead

It doesn’t take much to turn this around: a mention of the putty on the same shelf, a question about what the customer actually needs it for, an offer to try before they buy, or just a heads-up that new stock is on its way.

The takeaway

Train every team member to treat a stock shortage as a chance to offer something else, not a dead end.

Independent retailers can’t compete with the majors on price, but they can out-curate and out-serve them, provided staff know the range well enough to make a recommendation without having to think about it.

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retail

5 ways your newsagency can profitably deal with the award wage increase, a rent increase and the surcharge ban

Award wages went up 4.75% on 1 July. Rent is tracking 4–5% higher for most. From 1 October, the RBA surcharge ban means card fees you were recovering from customers need to be absorbed or built into prices. The combined hit is around 1.5% of turnover for a typical newsagency — real money when margins are already thin.

Here are five ways to recover some of it, using tools already in  newsagency software.

1. Reprice the stock you control

Magazines and newspapers are priced for you. Stationery, gifts, art supplies and general merchandise are not. If you have not looked at those prices recently, there is a reasonable chance you are undercharging.

A smart stock manager lets you update prices across a category in one pass, in bulk, accurately, safely. Some newsagencies mark up stationery at 100%; others run 125% and see no drop in sales. Worth checking where you sit.

A small increase of 1% across what you control might get you nicely into positive ground.

2. Stop entering invoices by hand

Five to ten hours a week on manual invoice entry is a full day of wages, every week, on admin. AI invoice arrivals imports supplier invoices directly — no typing, fewer errors, no chasing up mistakes.

Those hours go back to the counter or to something that actually earns revenue.

3. Clear dead stock

Stock that has not sold in six months typically accounts for 10–15% of total inventory value. It is taking up shelf space, paying rent per square metre, and returning nothing.

The software flags these lines. Get them out through clearance, supplier return or bundling, and the capital goes back into stock that moves.

4. Find your stockouts

Missed sales are invisible unless you look for them. The insights dashboard makes them visible: it shows the dollar value of sales lost because a product was not in stock when a customer wanted it.

Match that with automated reordering and the lines that drive your sales stay on the shelf.

5. Use theft detection tools

Theft typically accounts for 3% – 5% of newsagency turnover. Most of the volume is customer theft; the highest individual losses tend to be internal.

The audit log and early detection tools in the software catch discrepancies well before a stocktake would. Earlier detection means a smaller problem to deal with.

Contact the Tower Systems team at sales@towersystems.com.au.

5 likes
Newsagency management

The customer who brought scissors

We had a humour card with a small floppy balloon penis on it. Funny card. Customers loved it. Sold consistently.

Then cards started appearing on the display with the balloon missing. We assumed a product fault — attachment not holding, supplier issue, something in the handling. We chased it down. Nothing explained it.

We checked the security footage.

A woman, late seventies or early eighties. She’d come in, browse, wait until no one was close, and snip. Clean off. She’d done it to several cards before we caught on. Came back and did it again after that.

It’s genuinely funny in hindsight. A dedicated, recurring mission to rid the shop of a balloon penis.

It also points to something that isn’t funny. Some customers believe they have standing to decide what a shop carries. Not by choosing not to buy something — that’s their right — but by removing the choice for everyone else. She didn’t want the card there. So she solved the problem herself, repeatedly, with scissors.

We see other versions of this regularly. Customers who complain about products they didn’t buy. Who tell you directly that you shouldn’t stock something because they find it offensive. Who seem genuinely surprised that their discomfort doesn’t automatically override your ranging decisions.

A retail range isn’t built for the most easily offended person in the customer base. It’s built for the whole of it. That card made people laugh and it sold. One person felt differently and handled it with craft supplies.

Stock what your customers want. Not what survives the most conservative person in the shop.

Back to our snipper. We confronted them and asked that they stop it. They complained. We invited them to shop elsewhere.

While our approach may have lost us customers through word of mouth (we certainly heard the complaint had reached others) we felt better for being true to the retailer we see ourselves as, stocking what more customers like and what we can have a laugh about.

…
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.

8 likes
Social responsibility

The price increase you most likely haven’t tried yet

If you are like a ship I visited a few days ago, you are likely sitting on hundreds of well-selling products right now where a 50 cent or one dollar increase would go completely unnoticed by customers but would add real dollars to the bottom line by the end of the year. Not a dramatic margin overhaul — just a quiet, deliberate look at what you’re charging versus what the product is actually worth to the person buying it. That gap exists in almost every shop. The retailers who go looking for it find it.

When did you last put a price up just to see what happened?

Not because a supplier raised their cost. Not because the margin report flagged something. Just because you thought a product might be worth more than what you’re charging for it.

Most newsagents never do this. Prices move when costs move. Margin percentage drifts down without anyone noticing, and the business quietly earns less than it should for years.

The products worth testing are the ones customers want rather than need. A card for a specific occasion. A gift that’s genuinely hard to find locally. A collectible that’s selling faster than you can reorder it. For those products, shoppers will often pay more than the current price suggests — you just haven’t asked yet.

Put one price up. Watch it for a couple of weeks. If it keeps selling at the same rate, you’ve found margin you were leaving behind. If it slows, adjust it. Neither outcome is a problem. One earns you more money. The other tells you something useful about your customers.

The retailers doing this well aren’t testing everything at once. That’s not experimenting, that’s chaos. They pick lines with strong, consistent demand and move carefully. Over time those small experiments add up to a margin position that looks nothing like where they started — without a supplier negotiation or a ranging overhaul in sight.

Your POS data already shows you which products are moving consistently. Start there. Pick something with steady demand, nudge the price, and watch what the data shows over the next few weeks.

The worst that happens is you learn something. The best is that you find margin that’s been sitting there the whole time, waiting for you to notice.

6 likes
Newsagency management

Selling your lottery business and keeping your shop might be a smart move

More newsagents outside of Western Australia are selling their lottery business. Not because they’re struggling — because they’re thinking ahead. I am seeing this move more and I guess others are too.

Some do it while winding down. The lottery licence has value, selling it separately makes the exit numbers work better than a whole-of-business sale. That’s been happening for years.

What’s newer is the transformation sale. Retailers actively rebuilding what their shop is and who it serves are looking at their lottery setup and seeing floor space, staff time, and capital locked into a product they no longer control.

The Lottery Corporation’s direction isn’t hard to read. Digital. Direct. Their money is going into moving lottery players onto their own platform. Every campaign pushing customers to the app reduces the long-term value of a retail licence. Newsagents paying attention are moving before the market moves for them.

Selling in that context isn’t giving up ground. It’s freeing it up.

The footprint a lottery terminal takes matters when you’re rebuilding a shop around gifts, collectibles, or homewares. That space earns more doing something else. The capital from the sale funds the change. The staff hours no longer absorbed by lottery transactions go somewhere that actually builds the business.

Buyers are around. Supermarkets adding a service draw. Chemists expanding their convenience offer. Standalone operators shifting the whole thing to a kiosk. For those buyers the licence fits traffic they already have. For the newsagent selling, it’s a clean separation.

This isn’t the right move for every retailer. If lottery is still generating foot traffic that converts into other purchases, the calculation is different. But look honestly at what lottery customers buy beyond their ticket. In a lot of shops the answer is not much.

The Aussie newsagency channel is mid-transition – well, for most retailers at least.

The retailers shaping what comes next are making deliberate decisions about what stays in the business and what doesn’t. Lottery deserves that same deliberate look — not held onto by habit just because it’s always been there.

I haven’t had lotteries in my newsagency businesses for 14 years now. It’s not necessary for success. What I love about not having it, having had it for years, is to not have to deal with what I personally found to be a bullying partner who thought they knew about newsagency retail, when they didn’t.

8 likes
Lotteries

Your rent problem started the day you signed the lease

When a retail business hits financial trouble, rent is usually the first thing that gets blamed. The landlord is charging too much. The centre isn’t generating the foot traffic that was promised. The deal that looked reasonable three years ago now feels impossible.

Sometimes those complaints are fair. But more often, the rent problem was created the day the lease was signed — by the retailer, not the landlord.

A rent problem started the day you signed the lease

This video unpacks that hard truth.

Signing a retail lease under pressure is one of the most common and costly mistakes in small business retail. It happens two ways. The first is optimism — a retailer projects the sales they hope to achieve rather than the sales they can reasonably expect, decides the rent is workable on those numbers, and commits. The second is FOMO. A good site comes up, there’s competition for it, and the fear of missing out pushes them to sign before they’ve done the work.

Neither is a business strategy. Both create the same outcome: a cost base the business can’t sustain.

The lease you sign determines your occupancy cost for years. It determines how much revenue you need to generate just to cover the floor you’re standing on. Get that number wrong at the start and you spend the life of the lease trying to catch up.

Before you sign anything — whether you’re starting fresh, expanding, or moving — stop. Get independent advice from someone with no stake in the deal going ahead. Map out a strict budget based on conservative trading figures, not optimistic ones. Understand what the landlord can and can’t control, and know the difference between a shopping centre lease and a high street lease before you commit to either.

Shopping centre leases come with restrictions that high street locations don’t. Trading hours, fit-out requirements, centre levies, exclusivity clauses — these affect your operating costs and your flexibility in ways that aren’t always obvious from the headline rent figure.

The numbers have to work on paper before they can work in practice. If they don’t stack up in a spreadsheet, they won’t stack up in a shop.

…

newsXpress works with members on lease negotiations and landlord issues. I’ve seen what goes wrong and we know what to look for. But this can only help if you seek help before you’ve signed, not after. Once the lease is executed, the options narrow fast.

4 likes
retail leases

To the newsagents standing still

I get it. Standing still feels comfortable. It’s what you know. You don’t have the money to do anything else. You don’t know what else to do anyway. So, you stand still, smile, take payment, wish them a good day and stand still waiting for the next customer. You do what you have to do to keep the doors open and toe lights on. And you do what suppliers tell you because you like having a plan,. But it’s all about standing still, because that’s where you’re comfortable.

The problem is the world is not standing still with you. Plenty in the newsagency channel aren’t standing still with you.

Newspaper sales fell 13% last year. Magazine revenue is contracting year on year. Lottery players are being pushed online — not by accident, but deliberately, by the people who run the lottery everywhere except WA. These are not temporary dips. They have been heading this way for years, and there is nothing on the horizon that reverses them.

A business standing still in a declining channel is not holding steady. It is losing ground at a pace that can feel like nothing, until one day the numbers make it impossible to ignore.

I have watched this play out many times. The newsagents who came through it well mostly started moving before they had to. Not a full overhaul. Not a rebrand. Just one deliberate change made while they still had cash flow and mental space to think clearly. Then another. Then another.

The ones who waited until the numbers forced their hand had a much harder time. Less room. More pressure. Fewer options on the table.

Here is what I also know. Most newsagents standing still are not standing still because they are complacent. They are standing still because nobody has shown them a credible first step that fits their situation. The advice they get is either too vague to act on or comes attached to a supplier wanting an order.

here’s the thing:

If you have floor space allocated to a category that is declining, measure what it is actually earning per square metre. Not what it used to earn. What it earned last month. If that number is low, you have a decision to make about what replaces it — and there are categories with real consumer demand that most newsagencies do not stock yet.

If you have not looked at your average transaction value in the past six months, look at it. If it is flat or falling, your existing customers are not buying more. That is a product mix problem, not a foot traffic problem.

If you do not know which 20% of your range is generating 80% of your margin, finding that out is the most valuable hour you will spend this month.
None of this costs money. It costs attention.

You do not have to change everything. But changing nothing, in a business where the core categories are structurally declining, is a decision with consequences. It just does not feel like one because the consequences arrive slowly.

If you want a conversation about where to start — specific to your store, your situation, your numbers — reach out directly. No pitch. No agenda beyond helping you find a way forward.

…
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

1 likes
newsagency of the future

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.

4 likes
2026

What we can learn from The Lottery Corporation Investor Day in Sydney

The Lottery Corporation held an Investor Day in Sydney last week and I am grateful for insights someone who attended shared with me. Here are takeaways that could interest newsagents who sell lotteries.

1. DIRECT TARGET: CONVERTING RETAIL CUSTOMERS TO DIGITAL

The absolute biggest priority for The Lottery Corporation (TLC) is converting unregistered retail shoppers into registered digital users. They said this in Sydney and they have said publicly elsewhere. The hiring decisions announced last week also speak to this.

The Gap: TLC currently has approximately 8,600,000 active players, but only 4,300,000 are registered. That’s what they are chasing. Some retailers see these folks as their customers. TLC sees them as their customers.

The Strategy: TLC intends to identify these in-store customers, transition them into app users, and market directly to them to increase playing frequency and retention.

Retail Impact: This represents a deliberate strategy to shift the customer relationship away from the physical counter and directly onto TLC’s own digital platforms.

2. RETAIL NETWORK FRICTION & STRUCTURAL CHANGES

The balance of power is shifting, which is expected to cause what some call a “tricky period” of tension between TLC and independent retailers.

QR Codes: The introduction of new QR codes on physical tickets is seen by  newsagents as a direct mechanism for TLC to poach their foot traffic and data.

Cap on Outlets: TLC is freezing the expansion of its physical retail network. That is a huge message on where TKLKC sees retail. Growth will no longer come from opening new outlets; instead, the focus is entirely on extraction, productivity, and quality over quantity from the existing footprint.

The Margin Shift: For TLC shareholders, this migration is highly lucrative: every 1% of turnover that moves from physical retail to digital adds roughly $6,000,000 to TLC’s EBITDA.

3. GAME REFRESHES AND PRICE INCREASES

TLC is taking a more active approach to game management, price increases, and margin optimisation than previous management.

Set for Life (S4L): A major refresh is launching in September 2026. Ticket prices will increase from 60 cents to 70 cents, introducing additional cash payouts while keeping the top prize at $20,000 a month for 20 years.

Oz Lotto: This is officially under review and is expected to be the next major game overhaul.

4. THE YOUNGER COHORT PUSH

TLC is repositioning itself from a traditional lottery operator into a “digitally led entertainment business.” A key focus of this transformation is capturing younger adults. TLC plans to introduce more social features, syndicates, subscription models, and AI-driven personalised recommendations to attract younger sports-betting demographics who are hunting for “lottery-style” high odds.

To me, the big note here are the tight focus on migrating shoppers to digital – evidenced by the QR code move, new hires, freezing new outlets and absolute clarity in the business about the commercial value of the transition.

COMPLAINING IS A WASTE OF TIME.

TLC is a public company with one requirement – to drive shareholder value.

In my opinion, complaining about what they are doing will not improve the situation of any retailer, investing money in lobbying them will not deliver a lasting benefit for any retailer.

If I was representing lottery retailers or if I was a lottery retailer, my focus would be on lobbying TLC for permission to place other products in the lottery area – to support retail and provide a smoother path to the transition TLC is seeking.

The best thing a TLC lottery retailer can do is to urgently recalibrate the business to bring shoppers in for products outside of lottery products, do the bare minimum to satisfy the franchise agreement and create a business that is strong without any lottery revenue.

If you have lottery products are feel you will lose your business as they migrate lottery customers to digital, you have to act today to improve your business. Nothing else matters.

If you’re in Newspower, Nextra or The Lucky Charm, ask what they are doing about this. I say this as what I have been sharing here on this is part of what I share with newsXpress members.

10 likes
Lotteries

Newspower’s EOFY email — what it says and what it doesn’t

Newspower sent another marketing email early this week, this time with an end-of-financial-year offer. Join before 30 June and receive $1,000 in supplier credit and four weeks of Facebook advertising campaigns.

A number of newsagents forwarded it to me. As with their earlier email, it is tidy and upbeat. And as with that email, I think it is worth reading carefully.

This is my take, my opinion. Do your own research and draw your own conclusions.

The $1,000 offer

The headline is $1,000 credit with a preferred partner supplier. The email adds that this represents “value of over $2,000 profit.”

That profit claim is doing a lot of work. It assumes a margin that is not stated, on product that has not been chosen, in a store whose circumstances are unknown. There is no category example, no margin calculation and no basis given for the figure.

The terms and conditions clarify that stock must be ordered by 30 September 2026. So the credit is tied to a supplier you choose, ordered within a fixed window, for product you then need to sell.

That is not necessarily a bad deal. But “value of over $2,000 profit” is a marketing line, not a financial analysis.

The question I have about the free stock offer is: will it attract new shoppers. To do this, of course, the products need to come from retailers who do not traditionally supply newsagency businesses. This suppliers are very important to newsagents right now.

Four Facebook campaigns

The offer also includes four one-week Facebook advertising campaigns to “maximise sales of the products you choose.”

Facebook advertising can work. The question is always how well. There are no numbers here: no reach estimates, no cost-per-click benchmarks, no examples of what previous campaigns delivered.

A week-long campaign for a single product line is a small window. Whether it moves stock depends heavily on the product, the local market and the creative. None of that is addressed.

The “300 members” figure

The email states that “approximately 300 independently owned newsagents” are already on board.

That is the first time I have seen a member count from Newspower. It is useful context. It also raises a question: how many newsagents have left?

Retention is often a more honest signal of group value than recruitment numbers. The email does not mention it.

The last number I had from research a couple of years ago was 500 retailers. If it’s gone from 500 to 300, that’s a thing.

More customers, more profit, more time

The five “More” promises — customers, profit, information, time, support — are presented as outcomes of joining.

Each one is reasonable as an aspiration. None of them come with a number, a timeframe or a case study. “More customers” through community promotion sounds good. What does it look like in practice? How many members have seen measurable foot traffic increase?

“More time” through social media and business listings management is a genuine value proposition if it is executed well. But the email gives no indication of quality, consistency or how the content is tailored to individual stores.

The dedicated Business Manager

Support through a dedicated Business Manager is listed as a benefit.

This can be valuable. The key questions are how many stores each manager looks after, how often they visit or call, and what their brief is when a store is not performing.

None of that is in the email.

Low-cost joining

“Joining is quick, simple and low-cost” is the close.

What is the cost? The email does not say. For a pitch built around financial benefit, the absence of a membership fee — or at least an indication of one — is a gap worth noting.

The broader point

An EOFY deadline creates urgency. That is the point of it. But urgency is not a reason to skip due diligence.

If you are considering this offer, the questions I would ask are: What is the full membership cost? What are the terms around the supplier credit? Which suppliers are included? What do current members say?

The email is designed to get you to reply with your name and phone number. That is the first step in a sales conversation, not the end of one.

Ask the harder questions before you get there.

…

I own newsXpress, a business that competes with Newspower.

11 likes
newsagency marketing

Why Lottery Retailers Are Challenging the New Lottery QR Codes

I made this video this morning because I keep getting asked about it — what the QR code on lottery tickets actually means for newsagents and why so many retailers are quietly frustrated.

The short version: it is a channel shift strategy. Print a QR code on an in-store ticket, point the customer toward an app, and over time that customer stops coming to the counter at all.

Watch the video. I cover the commission economics, the foot traffic problem, and why the contract terms make the whole thing harder to swallow.

The numbers

A $126.00 entry sold over the counter earns the retailer around $15.50 in commission. The same entry sold digitally keeps that with the corporation. Their infrastructure cost is essentially fixed whether they process ten transactions or ten thousand. Every customer shifted online is pure margin gain for them.

That is not a coincidence. That is a strategy.

The foot traffic problem

Lottery customers are habit customers. They come in on the same day every week. While they are there, they buy other things. Point them toward an app and that habit breaks. The cross-sell opportunity goes with it.

The contract makes it worse

Most lottery agreements require retailers to maintain prime counter space exclusively for lottery branding — no competing products, financial penalties for non-compliance. So retailers carry the cost of that space while the supplier uses it to redirect their customers elsewhere.

What to do

I said it in my post earlier this week and I will say it again here. Do the minimum required to hold your contract. Then build your business so it does not depend on lotteries. If losing lotteries tomorrow would threaten your viability, that is the problem to solve — not whether the QR code is fair.

This is urgent, I think.

WA is the exception. The government-owned model there works differently and the retailer relationship is genuinely more cooperative. In the eastern states under private corporate frameworks, the direction of travel is clear.

If you want to talk through how to restructure your range and reduce reliance on restricted categories, contact me at 0418 321 338 or mark@newsxpress.com.au.

12 likes
Ethics
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