One of the biggest challenges newsagents have when bringing in a new line is location. Too often the product is displayed in such a way that makes finding the right location difficult. Such was the case with the inspirational cards and mini books. We have these for several years, in one form or another, but it has only been in the last few weeks that we created a small display at the end of one of our card aisles that they started to work for us. Here is a photo of what we did:
The easy comment is that we should have done this ages ago. Time and space were a challenge. It was only when we moved the Darrell Lea display from this aisle end and bought the table that we were able to use the space in this way. Now, instead of having these small, and annoying, spinners spread in various places, we have them grouped together. As well as each line selling better, we are finding customers buying two or three.
Our message for sales reps out of this is: as well as promoting product, show us via photos how to best display it in a busy and real-estate poor newsagency. Otherwise the spinner gets shoved from pillar to post, as we did, until either it is tossed or re-born when space and time provide the opportunity.
Our message for ourselves is to pay more attention to the stock we have and to keep working categories until we find the best way to display them in our store so that we achieve the return we need.