Owning two newsagencies (Forest Hill and Frankston) and a shareholding in another (Watergardens) provides me with access to up to the minute intimate data about the businesses. This abundance of data from three different newsagencies is seductive and the learnings considerable.
Take magazines, we can see a category up in one store and flat or down in the others. We dig deeper and find out why and make some changes. Another example is diaries. In two stores we’re seeing excellent sales while the third is yet to get the diary story out. When they saw the data from the other two they actioned it right away.
Being able to easily compare across a common IT platform and using common department and category structure is fantastic.
I can see all three newsagencies significantly benefiting from access to the pool of data – the key is to not be seduced too deeply into analysis.