Success can be painful as this story about Good Medicine shows.
Sales in our store for this title are soft at best no matter what we do. This month, Good Medicine comes with a free music CD. It is also the feature title in this week’s Connections promotions – Connections is an excellent ACP Magazines initiative providing marketing support to newsagents. Connections’ promotions boost sales. Thanks to the display we created with the Connections materials we sold out of Good Medicine in eight days. We called the ACP owned distributor, Network Services, and spent too long on the phone begging for extra stock. They wanted to know why we wanted the stock. To sell of course! They offered us two copies. Eventually a supervisor agreed to provide ten. ACP/Network control the supply of extra stock because of the need to keep returns to a minimum. I understand that. We would be happy to order firm sale but that’s a whole other story.
There is no doubt, based on any reasonable assessment, that our request for ten copies was justifiable and ought to have been quickly actioned. That we had to beg for stock is de-motivating.
Newsagent competitors would not care. If they sell out of Good Medicine they will fill the pocket with something else. That newsagents chase extra stock, while a frustration for Network, is something to respect as it reflects our desire to build our businesses and serve our customers.
Magazine publishers risk, with some business rules, making newsagents less interested in growing their businesses. Please don’t stifle the entrepreneurs … unless you don’t want us.