Aisle capping promoting magazines

We are experimenting with category based aisle displays at our Frankston store.

While this does not serve individual titles well and will frustrate some publishers, it allows us to showcase a category of titles and thereby, hopefully, introduce customers to dept of range they may not have seen before.

This type of display, covering several titles in a category, demonstrated our point of difference. While I want the top selling titles to do well, I need the lower volume titles, the titles other retailers shun, to do well too. Lower volume titles are out point of difference.

Yen is benefiting from this work. People drawn to the display with Marie Claire and Vogue as centrepieces see Yen and are buying it. Vogue sell too, but it would anyway.

What is happening with Yen is interesting to me because two or three years ago, newsagents were paid a pittance by a company called InSite to promote Yen. InSite arrange for considerably more stock. The cost of carrying this and the space required was not covered by the small marketing fee paid. The InSite approach was a failure, not worth the additional cost. Now, through what we’re doing at Frankston, where we have the space available for such displays, we are achieving better results for Yen.

I wish publishers and distributors would reward newsagents for growth. Rewarding success and treating us as business people would see more newsagents make better business decisions. InSite was based around a micro fee for compliance. Our approach at Frankston has nothing to do with compliance – it’s about what’s good for the business.