newsagent advice retail advice

Queensland’s Crackdown on Illegal Tobacco Is Working

·May 28, 2026
·Mark Fletcher
·0 Comments

For years, illegal tobacco operators undercut licensed retailers without much consequence. Newsagents watched competitors sell illicit cigarettes, loose tobacco, and unregulated vapes at prices no compliant business could match. Enforcement was patchy. The damage to legitimate retailers was real.

Queensland changed tack. The results are worth knowing about.

What Changed

From late 2024, Queensland Health gained new powers to act directly against illegal operators — and act quickly. The previous reliance on lengthy court processes gave way to on-the-spot closure orders. Legislation introduced in late 2025 went further, allowing Queensland Health to shut a store for 90 days without needing a court order at all. The state also hired 43 new enforcement officers to back the expanded operation.

The Numbers

Between November 2024 and August 2025, Queensland Health seized more than 52.4 million illicit cigarettes, 420,000 illegal vapes, and 7,500 kilograms of loose tobacco. More than 140 interim closure orders were issued and over 3,000 fines imposed.

In December 2025, a single 10-day operation, Operation Major it was called, shut down 148 stores and seized over $15.7 million worth of illegal products, including 11.8 million cigarettes, 1.7 tonnes of loose tobacco, and 87,000 vapes. One business was fined $45,000 earlier in the year for selling illicit tobacco and vapes.

Why Newsagents Should Care

Licensed newsagents carry costs that black-market operators never did, licences, display compliance, tax obligations. The Queensland enforcement model shows what happens when authorities are properly resourced and the legislation has real teeth. Less illegal product in the market means a fairer environment for retailers doing the right thing.

One Concern Worth Noting

Some retailers have raised concerns that competitors are using the complaints process as a tactic, reporting legitimate businesses to cause disruption. This appears hard to do in practice. Complaints are not anonymous. Anyone lodging a report must provide their own details. That keeps the process honest and makes bad-faith reporting a genuine risk for the person making it.

What Comes Next

Hopefully, other states are watching Queensland closely. There is growing pressure to match the approach, and calls for the Commonwealth to do more at the border to stop illegal stock entering the country.

Queensland has shown the model works. The question now is whether other states move quickly enough to follow it.

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Tobacco sales

How do we prepare for the October 1 card surcharge ban?

·May 27, 2026
·Mark Fletcher
·0 Comments

October 1 is not that far away. Retailers should already be implementing a plan to deal with the situation.

Know what you’ll lose. Look at what you pay in card processing fees annually. Request a clear, itemised breakdown from your bank or payment processor detailing your current cost of acceptance for debit versus credit. That’s the figure you want to cover in other ways.

There are two obvious options to deal with the RBA imposed surcharge from October 1:

Cut costs. Typically, this will mean labour as that’s usually the second biggest operating cost in the business. While you can cut the dollars, you risk cutting revenue too.
Increase prices. A small adjustment (1.0% to 1.5%) broadly based offers a good option. The thing is, if you can gently increase prices without negatively impacting sales volume, why haven’t you done this already.?

There are other options to throw into the mix:

Least Cost Routing. Ensure Least-Cost Routing is explicitly turned on by your provider.

Look at processing alternatives. We are already seeing companies offer new deals to lock retailers in ahead of October 1. Do your research. Under the new rules, payment providers processing over $10 billion annually must publish transparent quarterly fee structures. Use this data to benchmark your current provider and negotiate a lower rate.

Work on your business.

Make sure it as efficient as possible.
Make sure all your stock is performing well – i.e. no dead stock.
Make sure you have and engage with a theft mitigation strategy.
Make sure you have what people want when they want it.

In a typical retail business, landing well on these four points can account for more than half of the net profit. What I am saying here is that by relentlessly pursuing these four things you can have a business performing such that the merchant fee situation is nowhere near as noticeable to you. Unfortunately, though, too many small business retailers will ignore these four things.

Now, it’s important to note that the surcharge ban does not currently cover American Express or Buy Now Pay Later services.

The bottom line is that October 1 is coming – are you ready for it?

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Newsagency management

2026 newsagency performance benchmarks / goals

·May 21, 2026
·Mark Fletcher
·0 Comments

Benchmarks are data points that let you compare your business against similar ones. What I share here today is a significant update to the last benchmark data points I shared, in 2023.

Gross Profit

For product sales only — exclude agency business revenue and costs.

Traditional newsagency average: 28%–32%
Transformed newsagency goal: 40%+

The traditional newsagency has no future.

The gap between traditional and transformed businesses keeps widening. Smart newsagents that have moved into clothing, artisan gifts, and other categories. They have products hitting gross profit margins of 50% to 65% on those lines. Businesses still leaning on legacy categories are finding that model harder to sustain each year. The 409% overall goal is a good low-point and attainable target for a business that is actively managing its mix.

Minimum Stock Turn

Stock turn is how many times you sell through your inventory in a year — current stock holding divided into total annual revenue. These are minimums. Below them, a department is not earning its keep.

Cards: 3 (the channel average is 1.55 — too low)
Gifts: 6 (tight range, fast movement)
Toys: 5
Plush: 5

Gift Revenue to Card Revenue Ratio

Minimum: 100%. Goal: 200% or more.

If cards bring in $50,000 a year, the target is $100,000 in gifts. Gift revenue is growing in businesses that have committed to it. It deserves floor space and buying attention.

Revenue Per Employee

Minimum: $250 per hour.

Labour costs have kept rising. This target matters more now than it did three years ago. Count the owner at fair market rates — a business that does not is not measuring itself honestly.

Revenue Per Square Metre

$4,500–$8,500. Where you land depends on location (country versus city), tenancy type (high street versus shopping centre), and product mix. Higher gross profit means you need less revenue per square metre to stay viable.

Revenue Mix Targets

Cards 25%
Gifts / Toys / Plush. 35%
Stationery 10%
Magazines / Newspapers 5%–8%
Other / Emerging. 22%–25%

Print is in terminal, structural decline. Magazine unit sales are down around 10% year on year. Newspaper unit sales in capital city stores are down as much as 13%. That floor space and buying budget needs to go somewhere more productive.

Clothing, coffee, homewares, and more are generating real money in transformed stores — some close to $100,000 annually from a single category. Build your own target here based on what is actually working.

Category Notes

Stationery The best stationery is that which people love, more so than the stationery they need. This type of stationery can attract a higher price, and higher margin. .
Magazines Niche and special interest titles are holding up far better than mainstream ones. Curate, if they let you.
Greeting Cards Lifestyle cards should be more than 40% of total card sales, with at least 12% year-on-year growth in this segment.
Counter Impulse Sensory and impulse lines should be more than 10% of toy and related sales. Engaged stores are growing this category. The product works; the question is whether you are backing it.
Online Revenue Online not an optional.

Floorspace Allocation

Cards 20%
Gifts / Toys / Plush 35%
Stationery 8%
Magazines / Newspapers 5%
New and emerging traffic lines 10%
Other products 12%
Counter / office / back room 10%

Newspapers should be is low cost space, away from the front door and counter. Keep the back room small — it does not generate revenue.

Mark-Up Goals

Stationery: 125%
Gifts: 110%
Plush: 110%
Jewellery: 300%
Clothing: 120%–150%

Occupancy Cost

Target: 9%–11% of total revenue (product sales plus agency commissions).

A shopping centre site will sit higher in that range than a high street one — that is expected. You control both margin and revenue. Both sides of that equation are your responsibility.

Labour Cost