Rayma Creswell, CEO of the Australian Newsagents Federation was quoted in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review as saying “If you go into an Australia Post shop, you’ll see that the offerings they have are really computer consumables and telephony consumables, more than stationery, as we do.”
Ms Creswell is wrong in her assessment. In Government owned post offices around 40% of floor space is devoted to general stationery and another 20% devoted to greeting cards and related product. Less than 10% of floor space is given over to telephony product.
In three Post Offices I visited yesterday less than 5% of stationery lines were the computer consumables to which Ms Creswell refers.
It is disappointing that newsagents are so ignorantly represented on this matter. I am a member of the ANF and am frustrated at their lack of attention to the competition from Australia Post.
One only has to review the Australia Post annual report to understand the importance of the broad retail offering in Australia Post outlets.
Elsewhere in the article, Ms Creswell says the ANF represents 5,000 newsagents. The reality is that Australia has 4,600 newsagents (source: ANF Year Book) and of these around 1,000 are ANF members.
Australia Post is taking business from Australia’s independent newsagents by using the traffic generated by its stranglehold on postal items to sell traditional newsagent items such as pens, pencils, staples, paper, cards, paperclips and so on. This is our own government using the monopoly they control to take business from shops like mine. They have only been in this space for a short time compared to newsagents.
So much for their support for small business.