Years ago I saw that partwork titles were an opportunity for newsagents and pursued better management tools within our Tower Systems software. While the road has been occasionally rocky due to supply side issues, we have exclusive proprietary software which helps newsagents increase the sales of partworks, better manages the challenges and nurtures happier customers. This is not sales spin from the owner of a software company, no, it’s how I see it in my own newsagencies.
Partwork customers are efficient customers for a newsagency, considerably more so than any other magazine customers. I discovered this in our first basket research eight years ago. Partwork buyers are at least 33% more likely to purchase other product in your newsagency. Once I had that data it was imperative we help newsagents who want to drive better businesses to better manage the category. Now, with our exclusive partworks tools we have newsagents pulling customers away from other newsagents who see partworks as a chose they would be happier without.
Partwork publishers in the UK, their Australian agent and local magazine distributors like what we are doing. This is what helps us produce better outcomes in the partworks category for newsagents using Tower Systems software. It will drive further changes this year as we stay ahead of the game chasing better outcomes for newsagents who get behind the partwork opportunity.
There are no other magazine titles advertised on national TV where newsagents are the exclusive retail outlet. How many other suppliers advertise our channel like that? While some newsagents complain that we are used to drive subscription sales, the sales numbers and profitability of partwork titles in my newsagencies and others I work with is proof that the current model works – if you drive it hard and with the right technology at the store level.
We are business people and we need to run our newsagencies as business people. Partwork titles are an excellent business opportunity. Over the next month or so we will see Shrek, Dora Dress Up and Go, and, the Australian Movie Collection. Each one of these is an opportunity to connect with new customers because our newsagencies are known as the partwork title specialists in the area. Each new customer brings new opportunities.
Take the new Columbo partwork series. We sold out of issue 1 and have more on the way. We expect that between 5 and 8 regulars will emerge from the initial promotion. Multiple the value of their sales and the add on business and you can soon see the importance to the business of well managed partworks.
If this blog post reads to you as an advertisement, it is. I am proud that we are able to use the software we create to give newsagents a competitive edge. It is a competitive market after all.
I couldn’t agree more with you Mark, however, how do you overcome the undersupply issue with the distributors?
My experience is, we put these customers on hold for these magazines, and before long we are unable to fill their orders and happy customers turn into very unhappy customers quickly.
Initially we did get burned where we would put in a backorder for the customers and they end up not coming back to collect despite phonecalls.
So now what we do is collect the money first, then place the order.
This will deter non-committed customers.
Am glad to say that so far we have all our backorders filled in the last couple of months, the last one received today.
Although partworks allow us the regular income, it is a dilemma when customers are behind in collecting.
generally after a couple of courtesy calls and deadline reminders, we return the items , so far these people never come back for any further issues.
I would happily understand if they could tell us they do not want to continue due to circumstances.