The photo shows the fishing segment of the magazine range in my newsagency as at this morning. Next to these two columns we have another two columns of boating magazines. The photo and my posts over the last two days about Fisherman & Boating serve as evidence supporting my call for newsagents to appoint a magazine czar to approve all titles which have access to our retail and distribution network.
Until we take control of this and respect our network as the asset it is, we will continue to experience oversupply and undersupply or magazines.
The Coles, Woolworths / Safeway, BP and Mobil petrol outlets get what they want in terms of magazines because they manage access nationally. That newsagents do not is, in part, our own fault. It leaves us disadvantaged. This is why we must appoint a czar and require all magazine publishers and distributors to deal with us through the czar. Sure distributors would not like this. It does not suit them having us control our labour and real estate assets.
Given the Forest Hill demographic, my newsagency is over serviced for fishing magazines. The problem is that no one distributor would know this as they would only look at their sales data. That suits their model. It does not suit niche publishers but they are too small to do anything about it.
I am across the discussions between magazine publishers, distributors and the Newsagents’’ Federation of magazine KPIs. The KPIs agreed thus far do not address the issue.
Until newsagents take control we will continue to experience problems such as those with Fisherman & Boating.