Musicland, which operates an 800 store strong music retail group (Sam Goody and SunCoast) in the US filed Thursday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Forbes has the story.
Newsagents in Australia face similar challenges. More news and information is being accessed online. We are also facing tougher competition from other retailers adding to their news and information product offering in store. Newsagents need to respond with more cost efficient magazine and newspaper space and stock allocation. This means newsagents need to push back on some suppliers of poor performing product. We also need to extend our product range outside our traditional and into better margin product which have more control over. If we don’t do this our stores face bankruptcy like the Sam Goody outlets.
This is one of the reasons I became involved with newsXpress last year and have taken a financial interest in the group. They are taking my newsagency beyond the traditional and adding margin.