Sunny Queensland

I am back on the Gold Coast today for the second day of the ANF conference sessions. Following my presentation today I met with a couple of and talked about the future of the channel. They are relatively new to the newsagency space and as such don’t have the baggage of politics and supplier fear and or devotion (depending of your view of the world).

These two have bold plans to push the envelope of the definition of a newsagency. They plan to keep the core but shrink its footprint and to create around this core a bold new retail concept.

I am hearing more of this. Entrepreneurial newsagents making decisions which are appropriate to their demographic and reflective of their skills. I am all for this – the more entrepreneurial newsagents, as opposed to process worker newsagents, the better. While some suppliers will lose out – because entrepreneurs will demand more control of their businesses, the channel as a whole will be stronger.

A side issue to the growth in entrepreneurial newsagents is that the definition of newsagent will need to be more flexible than it has been in the past. It would be a shame to see industry associations reject newsagencies of the future because they do not sufficiently stick to the past.

Footnote: the photo of the Gold Coast beach was taken this morning – so much for Queensland sun.