We have had an excellent December in magazines at Forest Hill. Here are some of the increases (in unit sales): Crosswords 10%, Music 18%, Special Interest 23%, Food 6%, Adult 7% and Women’s Weeklies 3%.
What is interesting about this is that the overall number of sales including magazines did not grow as much. Most of the growth came through basket growth and this has been achieved through newsXpress strategies and our own obsession with magazines and driving every up-sell possibility.
Our focus is to have the store up-sell itself – based on layout, displays and obsessive moving of stock. I would pit our approach against the over the counter US style up-sell script pitch others tell newsagents they should use any day.