I have been in Adelaide today meeting with newsagents who use Tower Systems software. Prior to the software part of the meeting there was a robust discussion about the many problems with magazines and with partworks. With magazines the most common problem seems to be with gross oversupply of the fringe titles – titles outside the top 200 performers. With partworks the problem is with undersupply – the cutting of newsagent supply by 80% after the first two issues.
The financial and emotional damage done by problems in the magazine supply chain costs newsagents a fortune every year. Suppliers and even some in newsagent associations complain that newsagents are their worst enemies when it comes to matters of magazine supply. Such comments are ignorant.
Take the group of newsagents I met with today. they are the best of the best – each following best practice in terms of magazine data management. This means they provide suppliers with sales data electronically every day. This sales data is not used in determining scale out – especially for the fringe titles. These titles consistently have a sell through rate of less than 50% and temporarily steal newsagent cash flow. Distributors see the financial cost their ignorant scale-out decisions wreak on newsagents yet they do not act on the sales data they fought hard for years to access. It’s as if compliance means nothing to newsagents.
In terms of putaways the problem is worse. Newsagents, through industry standard technology, let distributors know about fixed orders – putaways – for customers yet distributors consistently under supply so that newsagents cannot meet these orders. Instead they sent the product to others only to have the product returns and, possibly, mad available to the newsagents with fixed orders.
My point is that in both situations the distributor’s own technology and the technology used by newsagents – to the standards dictated by the distributors – can fix this and provide a more equitable scale out to compliant newsagents. The distributors ignore the opportunity. NDD is the worst by far. This was discussed today in Adelaide and the room concurred that some of the junk they are supplying to newsagents is appalling.
This is why we, newsagents, need a magazine czar. Our channel is open to any publisher who wants to pay magazine distributors to ship their product. For their part, distributors are covered. Newsagents are not. We have cash at risk, real estate in use, labour in use and theft to face. A magazine czar, on our payroll and on our side, could stop some of the crap we see today. They could also work on the perennial issue of gross oversupply as well as the problem of the partworks con where stock is not available after a couple of issues.
To those who are moaning that I am beating my usual hobby horse I’d say read what I have written. I want to sell more magazines. I know that if my suppliers used the data I and other newsagents provide this could be achieved. All it takes is a will, on their part, to sell more magazines.