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succession planning

Advice on How to Decouple Your Newsagency From the Channel: Five Jobs, Two Years

I have written plenty here about why I think newsagents need to decouple from the channel. The data points to less than ten years of life left in the traditional newsagency. The question I get asked most is how.

Decoupling is not a slogan and it is not a rebrand you order from a signwriter. It’s not restricted to any particular brand of newsagency either.

Decoupling is five jobs, done in order, over about two years. I watch newsXpress members do this work, so what follows is drawn from real shops.

Job one: find the number that is not yours. Go through your last full year and add up the gross profit from lines where somebody else sets the commission and can change the terms without asking you. Papers, magazines, lotteries, parcels, bill payments. That total, as a share of your whole GP, is your exposure. For a traditional newsagency it usually sits between half and three quarters, which shocks most owners the first time they see it. The goal is below a third. One afternoon with your POS data gets you the number.

Job two: make the floor tell the truth. Your floor is a budget. For each zone, note the share of space it takes and the gross profit it produces, divide one by the other, and sort. Most shops find a quarter of the floor producing five per cent of the profit. Quit the dead categories through a proper clearance, bank the cash, and give the space to what earns: cards, gifts, celebration. Put the papers at the back. I mean that literally. The paper customer will walk for them, and on the way they pass everything you actually make money on. Rerun the table quarterly. Move one bay each quarter.

Job three: replace the traffic before it leaves. This is the hard one, and I think it is where most transformations stall. I know of a shop with a terrific mix, gifts leading, print under ten per cent of GP, whose customer count still fell seven per cent last year. Changing what you sell does not by itself change why people come. Agency lines rented us traffic for a hundred years. Now you create it yourself. A loyalty program with real names and birthdays in it. A window that changes monthly, without fail. Small events. Local product, because the honey from ten minutes away brings in people Hallmark never will. Social media about what you unpacked this week. None of it is glamorous. All of it is weekly.

Job four: change the word. Only now do you change the sign. A rebrand on top of an unchanged shop is wallpaper. New trading name, new signage, and update your Google listing category from newsagency to gift shop, because that one field decides what searches you appear in. Check your lease first, since permitted use clauses can trip you up. Tell the story as growth: we have outgrown the old name. And do it while you are trading well. The worst time to rebrand is when you finally have to.

Job five: decouple the owner. A shop that runs out of your head is coupled to one more thing that will eventually leave. You. Document the routines. Give staff real departments with real numbers. Review the figures monthly like a board would. Nobody is queuing to buy a newsagency, but a profitable gift destination with owned traffic and clean numbers is a business a buyer can imagine owning. Decoupling and exit value are the same project.

Four numbers on the back room wall, checked monthly: customer transactions, the share of GP you control versus the share others control, GP per square metre, and the basket. If transactions and your owned share of GP are rising together, it is working.

You are done on the day no boardroom decision made without you can materially hurt your business. That is the whole test.

It starts with one afternoon and your own sales data.

Let me know if I can help: mark@newsxpress.com.au.

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Newsagency management

In closing this series: the exit you get is the one you build

Over the last fifteen posts there is one key message. What happens when you leave your newsagency is decided long before the day you walk out the door.

My goal here is to encourage you to think about this. and work on it long before you need to.

The series opened with a hard truth. Goodwill has collapsed for businesses that stayed tied to declining print and lottery, and no buyer will pay for a shop with no defensible profit. But it collapsed selectively. The newsagencies that shifted to high-margin gift and specialty categories, that became destinations rather than conveniences, and that learned to run without the owner, still attract buyers and still sell well.

From there, the path forked into choices. Know what the business is really worth. Spend the years before you list making it saleable and getting the numbers exit-ready. Understand that the lease and, for owner-occupiers, the property can matter more than the price. Where a buyer cannot fund the full amount, vendor finance can bridge the gap.

Then there is the question of who takes over. It may be a staff member who already knows the business. It may be family, if they genuinely want it and the fairness is handled openly. It may be nobody, in which case running under management keeps the income without a sale. And where none of that works, closing well, on your terms and with your head up, is a good ending in itself.

Through all of it runs one thread that owners underestimate: the human side. Succession is a joint decision when you run the shop with a partner. Co-owners rarely reach the exit at the same time. And whatever route you take, the shop eventually ends, leaving a life to be rebuilt on the other side.

The common lesson is the same one the best owners in this series lived out. Start early. Be open, inside the business and out. Get proper advice. And accept that the exit you get is, in the end, the exit you built.

The shop closes either way. What people remember is how you closed it.

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Newsagency management

When co-owners can’t agree on the exit

Twelfth in the succession and exit series. Following the post on couples, this one tackles the harder case: co-owners, partners or siblings who reach the exit at different times and cannot agree on the way out.

Two people own the shop. One wants out. The other wants to keep going. Now what?

This is one of the most common and least discussed problems in newsagency succession. Business partners, siblings who inherited together, a couple, two mates who bought in years ago. The moment their plans diverge, the business can freeze, and the relationship can sour. Getting through it takes structure, not just goodwill.

Why it happens

Co-owners rarely reach the same point at the same time. Life sees to that.

One partner hits retirement age, or ill health, or simply runs out of appetite for the early mornings. The other is younger, or more attached, or not ready financially. One wants to sell now at whatever the market offers. The other wants to hold on, or hold out for a better number. Both positions are reasonable from where each person stands. That is what makes it hard.

The mistake that makes it worse

The common mistake is to leave it unspoken. One partner quietly disengages, or drags their feet, while the other stews. Resentment builds, decisions stall, and the business drifts while the owners avoid the conversation.

A drifting business loses value. Every month of deadlock is a month the shop is not being driven forward, and buyers can smell a stalled partnership. Avoidance is the most expensive option of all.

Ways through

Buy-out. The partner who wants to stay buys out the one who wants to leave. This is often the cleanest answer. The challenge is funding and a fair price, and vendor finance between partners can bridge the gap where a bank will not.

Sell the whole thing. If neither can buy the other out, selling the business to a third party resolves it, and both walk away. This suits partners who are close enough in view that a clean break beats a strained continuation.

Agree a timeline. Sometimes the disagreement is about when, not whether. A partner who is not ready today may be ready in two years. Agreeing a firm exit date can hold the partnership together long enough for both to be ready.

Bring in a third party. Where emotion is running the negotiation, a neutral adviser or your shared accountant can value the business fairly and broker terms without it becoming personal.

Put it in writing before you need to

The best time to solve this is before it arises. A written agreement between co-owners, setting out what happens when one wants to exit, saves enormous grief.

How is the business valued? How is a buy-out funded and timed? What if the partners cannot agree? A partnership or shareholder agreement that answers these in advance turns a potential war into a process. If you own with someone and have no such agreement, drawing one up now is the most useful thing you can do.

The point

Co-owners will not always want to leave at the same time. That is normal, not a betrayal.

Get the disagreement into the open before it festers. Choose a path: buy-out, sale, or an agreed timeline. Use a neutral party when emotion takes over. And if you can, put the rules in writing before you ever need them. The business, and the relationship, both depend on it.

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Selling your newsagency

Succession when you run the shop as a couple

Eleventh in the succession and exit series. Most newsagencies are run by two people, so any exit is a joint decision. This post looks at succession when the owners share a life as well as a business.

Most newsagencies are run by two people who share a bed as well as a business. Husband and wife, partners, a couple who bought the shop together and have run it for decades.

That shapes succession in a way the textbooks ignore. You are not one owner making a plan. You are two people who must agree on when to leave, how to leave, and what comes next. When they do not agree, the exit stalls, and the relationship can strain along with it.

Two owners, one decision

An exit plan only works if both partners genuinely own it. It is easy for one to drive the decision while the other goes quietly along, unconvinced. That unspoken disagreement surfaces later, usually at the worst moment.

One partner may be ready to retire while the other cannot picture life without the shop. One may want to sell at any price to be free; the other may want to hold out for a number that is not coming. Neither is wrong. But the gap has to be talked through, not papered over.

The couples who exit well do the same thing the best owners do with staff and family: they get it into the open early and honestly.

The identity question hits differently

When a couple leaves the shop, they do not just lose a business. They lose the shared structure of their days.

For decades the shop has organised their time, their conversations, their sense of purpose. Retirement can leave a couple in the house together with none of that scaffolding, and that is a bigger adjustment than either expects. Talking about what you will do with your time, together and apart, is as important as talking about the sale price.

Divide the exit tasks

A couple has an advantage here if they use it. There is a lot to manage in a wind-down or sale, and two people can share the load.

Play to strengths. One partner may be better with the numbers, the accountant and the buyer negotiation. The other may be better with staff, customers and the emotional close. Agreeing who handles what reduces friction and stops both of you carrying the whole weight.

Protect the relationship

The exit is temporary. The relationship is not. Do not let the stress of leaving the business damage the partnership that will outlast it.

Disagreements about money and timing are normal. Handle them as a couple making a joint decision. Where you cannot agree, a neutral third party, your accountant or an adviser, can help you find a path without it becoming personal. The goal is to walk out of the shop still on the same side.

The point

If you run the shop as a couple, succession is a joint decision, and it needs both of you fully in it.

Agree on the timing and the terms out loud, not by assumption. Face the identity change together. Share the tasks. And protect the relationship through the stress, because that is the thing you are really retiring into.

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Selling your newsagency

Keeping it in the family: planning succession without the fallout

Tenth in the succession and exit series. Following the post on selling to a staff member, this one looks at the other insider option, passing the business to family, and the fairness and preparation problems that come with it.

Passing the newsagency to a son or daughter sounds like the happy ending. Sometimes it is. Just as often it turns into the hardest thing a family ever does.

Family succession fails not because the business is weak, but because the plan is unspoken. Assumptions sit unaddressed for years, then surface at the worst moment. Getting this right takes as much planning as any sale to a stranger, and more honesty.

Start with an honest question

Does the next generation actually want it?

Too many owners assume a child will take over because it would please them, or because the child once said something encouraging a decade ago. The child, meanwhile, may feel trapped by duty and quietly dread it.

Ask the question directly and early. Give them room to say no without guilt – this is critical. A newsagency handed to an unwilling successor helps no-one. It burdens the child and puts the business you built into hands that do not want it.

If they do want it, the real work begins.

The fairness problem

The hardest part of family succession is rarely the business. It is the other children.

If one child takes the shop, what do the others get? The business is often the largest asset a family owns. Handing it to one and leaving the rest to split the remainder can breed resentment that outlasts you.

There is no single answer, but there are principles. Be transparent with everyone, not just the successor. Separate the idea of equal from the idea of fair, because they are not always the same. A child who works in the business for years has earned something a sibling who never set foot there has not. Get these conversations into the open while you are alive to have them, rather than leaving a will to detonate later.

Prepare the successor properly

A child who grew up in the shop knows the counter. That is not the same as knowing the business.

Bring them through the parts owners hide. The banking, the supplier accounts, the tax, the wage bill, the lease. Let them make ordering decisions and live with the results. Hand over real authority in stages, and step back as they grow into it. The goal is a successor who can run the shop without you before you leave, not the day after.

Resist the urge to hover. Nothing undermines a successor faster than a parent who hands over the keys but keeps making every decision.

Get the structure right

Family transfers carry tax and legal consequences that catch people out. Capital gains, stamp duty, the treatment of the trading entity and any property all matter. The rules are not simple and they change.

Involve your accountant and solicitor early, and treat the transfer as a proper transaction even though it is family. A clear agreement, in writing, protects the relationship. Handshake deals between parent and child are where families come undone.

The point

Keeping it in the family can be a fine outcome. It is not automatic and it is not easy.

Ask whether they truly want it. Be fair and open with the children who are not taking over. Prepare your successor as you would any new owner. And get the structure advised properly. Do that, and you protect two things at once: the business, and the family.

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Selling your newsagency

Your next owner might already work for you

Ninth in the succession and exit series, and the first of the posts on who the buyer might be. When no outside buyer appears, the answer may already be on your payroll. It builds directly on the vendor finance post, since internal buyers usually need those terms.

When owners think about selling, they look outward. They list the business, run an ad, wait for a stranger to make an offer. Often no stranger comes.

They miss the person who might already be standing behind the counter. The best buyer for a newsagency is sometimes the manager or long-serving staff member who already knows the business, the customers and the takings.

Selling from within is worth taking seriously. It rarely happens by accident, though. It happens because an owner planned for it.

Why it can work

An internal buyer starts with advantages no outsider has. They know the trade. They know the quiet Tuesdays and the Christmas rush. They know the regulars by name. There is no handover cliff, because they are already across the business.

Customers barely notice the change. The person who served them last week serves them next week, only now they own the place. That continuity protects the goodwill that a sudden sale to a stranger can destroy.

And you get an exit where there might otherwise be none. A trusted staff member who wants their own business is a buyer sitting in front of you.

The obstacles, honestly

The catch is usually money. Your staff member wants the business but cannot raise the price in cash. A young manager will not walk into a bank and secure the full amount against a newsagency.

That is where creative terms matter. Vendor finance, where you carry part of the price and they pay you out over time from the trading profit, is common in these deals. So is a staged handover, where they buy in gradually and lift their share as they go. You take on some risk, but you also keep an income stream and a motivated buyer with skin in the game.

The other obstacle is capability. Being a good employee is not the same as being a good owner. An employee follows the system. An owner has to build and defend it, carry the cash-flow worry, and make the hard calls. Not every good manager wants that, and not every willing manager can do it. Be honest about the difference before you go down this road.

How to set it up

Spot the potential early. Watch who takes ownership without being asked. Who reorders before you notice the gap. Who treats the shop like it is theirs. That instinct cannot be trained easily.

Grow them into it. Give a promising staff member real responsibility well before any talk of sale. Let them run ordering for a category, manage a roster, see the sales figures. You are testing them and training them at once.

Be open about your plans. If you would sell to the right internal buyer, say so. It gives an ambitious employee a reason to stay and to lift their game. Secrecy helps no-one here.

Get the deal advised properly. Vendor finance and staged buy-ins have real tax and legal consequences for both sides. Involve your accountant and a solicitor before you shake hands. A clear, written agreement protects the relationship as much as the money.

The point

Your next owner may not answer an advertisement. They may already clock on each morning.

If you have someone with the instinct and the appetite, grow them, be open with them, and structure a deal they can afford. An internal sale can hand you an exit, protect your customers, and pass the shop to someone who already loves it.

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Selling your newsagency
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