With sales of special interest titles up by 25% this year compared to 2006 and sales of computer magazines down by the same amount it is no surprise that last week we further reduced space allocated to computer titles and increased space allocated to special interest titles.
Layout is key with special interest titles and this is something we work on at least three times a week – ensuring the have appropriate adjacencies and that the many segments within the overall category can be easily identified by browsers.
One challenge is real-estate. With these special interest titles supplied in small quantities we need to find a way to carry more stock in less space yet to still display the titles appropriately. We are working on that.
We balance our real-estate allocation based on data from our computer system. This includes spotting trends which guide us to be opportunistic.
Note to magazine distributors – this is not a green light to send us more stock, we will let you know if we want that.