A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

A wall of boxes

Newsagents across Australia were confronted by boxes of two new partworks today. Here is our wall of boxes:

part_boxes.JPG

I am sure the James Bond car series will be a hit – it better be, we have no storage room.

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partworks

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  1. steve

    James Bond and his cars arrive in January in the UK supported by the usual TV advertising. For us we found that this is a partwork that attracted an 8 to 15 year old market. An age range that we don’t have to many of amongst our customer base.

    You clearly have a challenge dealing with this size of drop in one hit, but looking at your display style it would appear that you have solutions for most products.

    The ongoing issue once you get beyond the first few issues and if you partwork business is like the UK they go firm sale after 6 or 8 parts, is how do you deliver the quite chunky fortnightly magazines and car or if do keep them in store for collection.

    A challenge either way.

    By the way from the photos you keep putting on your blog you’ve got a great looking store.

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  2. mark

    Steve it is interesting that you go on firm sale. They do not do that here. Supplies are cut aggressively – making keeping customers beyond issue 5 or 6 most challenging.

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  3. Lorraine

    I look forward to the photo of the next delivery.
    My understanding is that, no matter how well you sell the first edition through, the supply is cut by 60% automatically so your reward for success in sales is a drastic cut in supply.

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  4. mark fletcher

    Lorraine I know they will cut supply. Sales os issue 1 is better than none. Also, we have been successful in clawing back the cut.

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  5. Brendan

    I’ve said it before and I’ll re-iterate my thoughts on part series. Newsagents are USED and ABUSED to create the initial market for part series and supply is cut to encourage customers to subscribe. I refuse to play this game (it’s probably easier for a subby) and no longer accept part series. The impact on sales is marginal and allows us to spend time the was under productive on morere worthwhile parts of the business.

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