The ACCC has set January 20 2008 as the proposed date on which it will announce its decision regarding the purchase of Borders by A&R Whitcoulls Group. If the acquisition proceeds it created a mega retail group not only covering books but also magazines since Supanews is part of the group. The material at the ACCC website on the proposed acquisition makes for fascinating reading.
While I am comforted at the work of the folks at the ACCC on the implications for books, I am disappointed that they have not considered the implications for magazines. Borders has achieved good magazine sales by offering a broad range of titles, many of which are imports. If the learnings from this are applied across A&R stores, newsagents would be impacted and this would reduce competition and therefore disadvantage the consumer.
If the acquisition proceeds I’d expect to see an impact on some newsagents. The best action we can take today to counter this is to get smart with magazines, obsess about them, focus on the titles you sell which no-one around you has – this is where I am seeing growth in my newsagencies and several others for which I have access to data.