I’ve been into between 50 and 60 retailers selling magazines here in the UK since arriving ranging from newsagents to bookshops to petrol outlets to supermarkets. It’s a very different magazine market to Australia both in terms of titles published and how they are retailed.
Newsagents in the UK range from what we in Australia would call convenience stores through to something close to a full service newsagency. However, this full service newsagency is rare here bit would seem.
I’m leaving the UK with then impression that what we have in Australia in the newsagency network, warts, divisions and all, is a tremendous asset to consumers and distributors and needs to be cultivated for these stakeholders.
Talking with people who should know there is less compliance here in the UK and far greater diversity across the newsagent shingle. There is little consistent in store promotion.
The magazine marketplace is dominated by what I would generously call trash magazines. They sell for under one pound. Titles for men, women, boys and girls. These titles make New Idea and Woman’s Day look like top shelf product. They don’t seem to have anything like a Woman’s Weekly as a cornerstone of the category. The UK weeklies are celebrity driven. The boys and men’s magazines are breast driven. Sure there are car magazines but it’s the trash which seems to dominate.
In the other segments of gardening, crafts, model making etc the best range I could see was not a match for an average Australian newsagency except for a couple of what they call super stores in the heart of Birmingham. The lack of range in most of the stores underscores the value of the real estate asset newsagents make available for publishers.
Having said all that, in the specialist newsagencies they display magazines better than we do. Adjacencies make more sense and their display systems allow for more full cover displays. In the women’s weeklies and women’s interests area especially I saw several innovations which must drive sales.