This is our Alpha display. It’s at the end of an aisle and seen by all our customers. We have over 15,000 customers through our store every week. I mention this to put a value on the aisle end.
The display took us an hour to create and will be up for a week. We’ll sell, through the month, probably 60 copies of Alpha. That’s a $30.00 return.
Like all newsagents we provide this space along with two other display spaces free without cost to suppliers. Okay, more fool us. Supermarkets and others charge. There are historic and contractual reasons why newsagents cannot charge.
I’m not having a crack at News Ltd in raising this issue of promotional space here but rather giving time to another way newsagents are disadvantaged in supplier relationships compared to our competitors. Publishers and distributors have a wonderful asset in newsagencies yet they continue to pursue sales elsewhere and risk killing off the newsagent asset which is so crucial to brand promotion as evidenced in our Alpha display.