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Ten years. That’s what I think this channel has left.

I’m back from our national conference in Perth. Two and a half terrific days with newsagents, newsXpress members and suppliers to the channel.

Two subjects took up most of the room. Where this channel is heading, and what AI is already doing inside shops.

Where the channel is heading

I’ll put it plainly. I think the newsagency channel, as a channel, disappears inside ten years. It gives me no pleasure to write that.


Australia sits one decision away from the closure of a capital city daily newspaper. Several of them lose money. They’re being held up partly by emotion. News Corp has always loved ink on paper. Kerry Stokes has his attachment to The West Australian. Nobody wants to be the publisher who switches the first one off. That decision is coming anyway.

Print stopped delivering news a long time ago. By the time the paper lands on the counter the story is old. Your customers already know.

Magazines tell the same story in slower motion. Deliveries went from three days a week to two, and now to one. In some places it’s a coin toss whether they turn up at all. Titles we missed used to be couriered out. Not now.

Are Media is publicly up for sale. There’s plenty of talk about a break-up, including Are Direct and possibly XchangeIT. Worth watching closely, because whoever ends up owning the distribution business owns the physical route into our shops.

Stationery keeps drifting to Officeworks. Dollarama buying The Reject Shop means a harder shove from the value end of the market.

And when we make the news, it’s a closure story. Another one bites the dust.

The answer we spent most of our time on

Most of the conference went on what to do about it. We call it decoupling.

Disconnect from being a newsagency. Stop identifying as one. Present as something completely different, ideally something local and yours, rather than another national group’s brand painted over the top of the old shop.

This is more than a cosmetic change. Once you’re not a newsagency, you can sell to people who would never have walked into one, and that’s the whole point.

Three retailers who have already done it spoke to the room. Former newsagents, all of them. They talked about de-identifying, and about how their businesses run now.

AI, live on the big screen

Nobody gave a presentation about AI. We put it on the big screen and worked on real businesses, no script, in front of the room.

One retailer is doing well with clothing and wanted to build it out. In front of everyone we looked at the mistakes being made, then at how to tell a better price and sizing story for the demographic in that town.

Another had already decided to decouple and wanted to know what else to sell. That session produced a series of opportunities needing little capital, and then a four or five page business strategy report.

We spent time on the risks too, on where AI gets things wrong. It’s useful in small business retail, but only with a human checking the work.

What I said to the suppliers in the room

This channel will lose two to three hundred newsagents this year. So think hard about what you pitch.

The smart operators want product that brings more people through the door, and a broader demographic than they have today. Product that panders to the history of the channel has no future.

If you’re not helping retailers reach further than they reach now, you’re worth less to them than the supplier who will. We’re in this together, and the ones who understand that will do well out of the next few years.

I have been called pessimistic before

A newspaper publisher once stood in front of a room and told everyone I was wrong about declining newspaper sales. Magazine publishers objected to me discussing magazine decline at all. Those calls have aged fine.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the traditional Australian newsagency has no future. A business built on lotteries, papers, magazines, stationery and greeting cards, and not much else, is already dead. The owner just doesn’t know it yet.

Now look at a shop leaning into sensory product, Pokémon and other collectibles, and good quality gifts. People walk in for completely different reasons. That business has somewhere to go.

Where we are

newsXpress has 194 members. We’ve never chased being the biggest, and we’re not your average newsagency marketing group. What we have is a group of retailers who want to move, and are moving.

Our focus is a strong back half of 2026, then 2027 and 2028.

Mark Fletcher
mark@newsxpress.com.au
0418 321 338

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newsagency of the future

When there is no buyer: closing your newsagency well

I get asked about buying and selling newsagencies often. There is a harder conversation we do not have enough: what to do when there is no buyer at all.

It is more common than most owners admit. When a newsagent cannot sell, they often just close. I said as much to Mumbrella late last year, and the rate of closures lifted again through 2025. A business built on newspapers, magazines, stationery and lotteries, with little change over the years, has no goodwill a buyer will pay for.

This post is for the owner facing that reality. I am not selling you a turnaround. I want to help you leave well.

The no-buyer reality

Frank and Moya Livingstone paid around $600,000 for the Mansfield newsagency two decades ago. They listed it, waited two years, and got no takers. In the end they closed the doors and walked away. “Unfortunately, it’s an industry nobody wants to take on anymore,” Frank told the ABC.

Their story is not rare. McGills, once the largest newsagency in Victoria and a Melbourne CBD landmark, closed because no-one offered to buy it. Whole towns have lost their last news service.

If this is your business, the absence of a buyer is not a personal failure. It is the market telling you the goodwill is gone. The sooner you accept that, the better your exit will be.

I know one regional owner who did exactly that. They put the business on the market, wanted to retire, and set themselves a deadline. Theirs was a transformed business by then. It did not look or feel like a traditional newsagency and it was terrifically profitable. Even so, two years passed with no sale. When the deadline arrived, they closed in a calm, structured way, sold the building and retired happy. There was no drama and no shame in it.

They had decided how their exit would look, and they held to it.

Winding down well

A closure is still a project, and it deserves to be run like one. The owners who manage it well start twelve months out, not twelve days.

Start with the lease. Your exit date is set by your lease more than anything else. Know when it ends, what your make-good obligations are and whether you can hand back early. This shapes every other decision.

The lottery licence needs its own plan. It sits with the operator, not with you to sell freely. Speak to the Lottery Corporation early about surrendering or transferring it, as the process and timing are theirs to control. Do not leave this to the last week.

Stock takes patience. Resist the urge to strip the shop overnight. Wind supply down category by category, stop reordering slow lines now, and discount in stages so you protect cash rather than dump everything at a loss. Magazines and returns need a clean final reconciliation with each distributor.

Give your card, gift and stationery suppliers notice, settle accounts, and return what you can. A tidy close protects your name and any future dealings.

Your people will know something is coming, so tell them early and honestly. Work out entitlements, final pays and references. This is often the part owners dread most, and handling it with care matters.

And talk to your accountant well before you close, not after. There are tax outcomes to a wind-down, and a clean set of final accounts protects you. Two to three years of lead time is ideal, but even a few months helps.

The part no-one prepares you for

The practical steps are the easy part. The hard part is what closing does to you.

For many owners the newsagency is not just income. It is identity. You have opened the door before dawn for twenty or thirty years. Customers know your name. You have been the one who kept the paper aside and remembered the birthday card. When that ends, the loss is real.

Frank Livingstone put it plainly: “You just close the doors, walk away, and lick your wounds.” There is grief in that line. Do not pretend it is only a transaction.

The regional owner I mentioned had one clear reason for retiring happy: they were open about the plan, inside the business and out. Staff knew, and so did customers and suppliers. There was no awkward secrecy. That openness turned a closure into a dignified ending rather than a quiet retreat, and it is the single lesson I would take from their exit.

A few things help. Give yourself time before deciding what comes next. Tell your customers properly, with a note in the window and a proper goodbye, rather than a locked door one Monday. Let them thank you, because it matters to them and it will matter to you. Keep some connection to the people and the work you valued. And be honest with your family about how you are feeling, because they carry it with you.

Closing a business you built is not defeat. What hurts owners is doing it badly, rushed and alone. Done on your terms, with clean accounts and your head up, it is something to be proud of.

The point

If you cannot sell, you still have choices about how you leave. Plan the wind-down properly, look after your cash and your staff, and sort the lottery and the lease early. Give yourself the same care you have given your customers all these years.
The shop closes either way. What people remember is how you closed it.

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Newsagency management

Reading your P&L and balance sheet: a plain-English guide for newsagents

Most newsagents I know don’t enjoy looking at their financials. The reports often arrive from the accountant. They get a glance. Then they go in a drawer.

That’s a missed opportunity I think.

Your profit and loss statement and your balance sheet are two useful management tools. They cost nothing extra. You already pay to produce them. Yet few retailers read them well, and fewer still act on what they show.

This is a plain-English guide. No jargon for its own sake. Just what the numbers mean, and the handful that actually matter in a newsagency.

The two reports, in one sentence each

The profit and loss statement shows whether the business made money over a period. A month, a quarter, a year.

The balance sheet shows what the business owns and owes at a single point in time. Think of it as a photograph taken on the last day of the period.

One is a video of the trading period. The other is a snapshot at the end of it. You need both.

The profit and loss, top to bottom

A P&L reads from the top down, and it narrows as it goes.

At the top is revenue, sometimes called sales or turnover. This is everything the business sold. In a newsagency it blends very different things: lottery commission, magazines, papers, cards, gifts, stationery, and whatever newer categories you have added.

A word of caution here. Total revenue can flatter you. A big lottery number lifts the top line but adds little profit. More on that shortly.

Next comes cost of goods sold, usually shortened to COGS. This is what the stock cost you to buy. Revenue minus COGS gives you gross profit.

Gross profit is the number that matters most in retail. It is the money left after paying for the stock, and it is what pays for everything else.

Below gross profit sit the operating expenses. Wages. Rent. Power. Insurance. Bank and card fees. Accounting. These are the costs of keeping the doors open, whether you sell much or little.

Take operating expenses away from gross profit and you reach the bottom line: net profit. This is what the business actually earned.

Why gross profit beats revenue every time

Here is the trap. Two newsagencies can report the same revenue and be worlds apart in health.

Imagine both turn over one million dollars. The first leans heavily on lottery and papers, low-margin lines. The second has shifted space to cards, gifts, and collectables. The second business keeps far more of every dollar. Same top line. Very different result at the bottom.

This is why a rising revenue figure is not, on its own, good news. What you want to see is gross profit rising, and rising as a share of sales.

Watch the gross profit margin. It is gross profit divided by revenue, shown as a percentage. Track it month on month and year on year. A margin that is drifting down is an early warning, often long before the bank balance shows it.

The handful of numbers that actually matter

You do not need to read every line. A small set of numbers tells the real story.

Gross profit margin. Covered above. The single most important percentage in the business. If it is falling, find out why before anything else.

Wages as a percentage of sales. Total wages divided by revenue. This is usually the largest controllable cost in a shop. Roster to sales, not to habit. The % should be 11% or less.

Occupancy cost as a percentage of sales. Rent, outgoings, and any centre levies, divided by revenue. It shows whether the site is earning its keep. The % should be 11% or less.

Stock turn. How many times a year you sell and replace your stock. Slow turn means cash tied up on shelves. It is the quiet killer of small retail.

Net profit, and the wage you pay yourself. Read these together. A business that shows a profit only because the owner takes nothing is not really profitable.

Get comfortable with those five. Ignore the rest until you have.

A note on the owner’s wage

Many newsagents do not pay themselves a proper wage. The profit then looks better than it is.

This matters most when you come to sell. A buyer, and a broker, will add a market wage back into the accounts to see the true earnings. Better to run the business that way now. It gives you an honest picture, and it protects the value of the business.

The balance sheet, without the fog

The balance sheet has three parts. Assets, liabilities, and equity.

Assets are what the business owns. Cash in the bank. Stock on the shelves. Money owed to you. Fittings and equipment.

Liabilities are what the business owes. Suppliers. The tax office. Any loans or finance.

Equity is what is left for the owner once you subtract liabilities from assets. It is the true worth of the business on that day.

The whole thing balances by design. Assets always equal liabilities plus equity. Hence the name.

What to look for on the balance sheet

Two things matter most for a small retailer.

Can the business pay its bills? Compare what it owns that is easily turned to cash, mainly bank and stock, against what falls due soon, mainly suppliers and tax. If the short-term debts are creeping up on the short-term assets, tighten up before it bites.

Is cash trapped in stock? A large stock figure is not a sign of strength. It is often a sign of dead lines and over-ordering. Stock does not pay wages. Cash does.

Read the balance sheet alongside the P&L. A shop can post a profit and still run short of cash, because the profit is sitting on the shelves as unsold stock.

Build the habit

Set aside 10 minutes at the end of each month.

Open the P&L. Check the gross profit margin against last month and the same month last year. Glance at wages and occupancy as a share of sales.

Open the balance sheet. Check the bank, the stock figure, and what is owed to suppliers and the tax office.

Write down one thing you will act on. Just one. Do that every month and the numbers stop being a mystery. They become a guide.

The bottom line

Good retailers are not those who avoid the reports. They are the ones who read them, calmly, on a regular schedule, and let the numbers shape the next decision.

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Newsagency management

What Do You Do When “Australian Made” Quietly Stops Being True

For years, we backed a supplier whose whole pitch was Australian made. We believed it, and used it, in our stores and in our marketing to customers who care where things come from.

Then we found out the manufacturing had moved to China. No announcement, no change to the packaging except for a single small print sentence, nothing on the website. We found out because we went looking.

That’s the part that stuck with us. A business that changes something this material to its customers, then says nothing, already knows how those customers would react if they found out.

So we went quiet too. We found a new supplier, one that actually makes the product locally, told them directly why local manufacture matters to us and our customers, and made the switch.

If a supplier moves manufacturing offshore and doesn’t tell you, that silence is the answer. They already know what you’d decide if you knew.

A few things worth checking if you carry products built on an Australian-made story:

  • Ask suppliers directly, and periodically, where the product is actually made. Packaging from two years ago doesn’t tell you much.
  • Watch for small wording shifts, from “Australian made” to “Australian owned” or “designed in Australia.” The change usually shows up in the fine print first.
  • Line up an alternative before you need one. Switching suppliers on your own timeline beats scrambling once customers start asking questions you can’t answer.

We’re not naming the supplier here. This isn’t about calling anyone out. It’s about the fact that “Australian made” is a claim customers trust you to have actually checked. When it stops being true, the business behind it owes you an update. Whether they give you one is up to them.

This experience has changed how we deal with suppliers now. We take extra care on manufacture location for those items for which this does matter, where we are likely to promote locally made.

If you make a shop local pitch when promoting your business, locally made will matter to you for sure. Start by doing an audit of the items you think are locally made. You might be surprised, as we were.

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Uncategorized

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

The Bon Scott 80th Birthday 2026 1g Gold Minted Bar is an easy $325.00 sale

Coins and bullion are too often misunderstood. 

A newsagent I was talking with this week complained that coins are a slow-moving category: something for the handful of customers who follow the gold price and buy a bar or coin every few months as an investment. That’s an incomplete picture, and it undersells what these products can do on your shelf.

The Perth Mint’s Bon Scott 80th Birthday 2026 1g Gold Minted Bar is a good example of why. On paper, it’s a small gold product: 1 gram, 99.99% pure, $325, with a mintage cap of 5,000. Sold as bullion, that’s a niche item for a niche customer. But it’s not who’s buying it.

AC/DC fans love it. Bon Scott fans love it. People who appreciate Australian music love it. Oh, and people buying gold as an investment love it.

We sold 20 of these bars in two days, online, and 80% of those sales went interstate, from customers who have never set foot in our shop and probably never will. That’s not local foot traffic buying gold. That’s fans finding a product because it spoke to them, not because they walked past a cabinet and had five minutes to kill.

This bar carries the Bon Scott crest, the words “BON SCOTT 80 YEARS,” and comes packaged in his touring tartan with his photo and signature on the sleeve. For an AC/DC fan, that’s not an investment product. It’s a piece of music history they can hold, tied to a birthday that will never be celebrated the usual way. At $325, it’s an easy purchase for someone who already owns the albums, the t-shirt and the vinyl reissue, and wants one more thing that means something.

If you’re only thinking about coins and gold bars as a bullion category for a small, older, price-watching customer, you’re leaving sales on the table. Licensed and themed releases, tied to music, sport, film or anniversaries, reach a younger buyer who cares about the story, not the spot price.

Magazines and lottery keep shrinking as a share of newsagency revenue, which makes this category worth a proper look.

Our future will be in products that you wouldn’t;t associate with a newsagency of twenty years ago.

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newsagency of the future

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.

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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

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.

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Lotteries

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
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