Today I witnessed the commercial value of being obsessive about magazines.
Let me set the scene: when I saw the photo of Bindi Irwin on the cover of Holidays with Kids last week I moved it from our travel section to this stand on the dance floor, between newspapers and the counter. At that stage we had all four copies.
We sold the second last of the four copies received this morning – the customer told me she bought it because of the Bindi Irwin cover. She came in to buy Who and the Herald Sun. Had we left Holidays with Kids in the travel section, this customer would have missed out and we would have returned, most likely, all four copies.
While the value of real-estate on the dance floor is higher than the travel section, an impulse purchase of Holidays with Kids reinforces newsXpress Forest Hill as a go to place for magazines. This is why we obsess about magazines and why we cheer when we see specific evidence of commercial success, even a small step, from that obsession.
Covers drive us in our obsession. If we, any of us, see a cover which permits the title to be co-located, especially into a higher traffic area, we go for it. Sure it takes extra time – we see this as the job of a magazine specialist.