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.
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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