What if we were to rent magazines as well as selling them? People could pay by the day or week (for monthlies). We could sell rental contracts in monthly (or longer) blocks. They could rent by the title or by the total rental days regardless of title.
I appreciate the ideas may seem ridiculous. Mull on it for a while and see what other ideas it ignites.
Mark, are you saying that the customer brings it back after they’ve finished it and then we return it?
Michael, I’d see rented copies as sold – i.e. we can’t return them. Mark
So more than one person could rent the one copy for say a week each, so then at the end of the month you’ve charged four people $2.50 each per week on a magazine worth $4.95?
Yes.
So we’d be in possession of it at the end of the month? We could still return them??? or there would be legalities with that???
I’d expect that we would not return the rental product.
You could sort of do it with like a coffee club card so they return one magazine and pick up another and then get charged at the end of the month on a direct debit system.
Have a rent four magazines for the month and get one free, bonus points etc.
I’m starting to warm to it but there’s problems of damaged magazines in the first week, pages missing, etc
It’s a far from silly idea. I grew up in the South of England in the sixties. My parents told me of a time when small town and village newsagents would rent books — just like a private lending library — in the days before people had cars to travel to nearby towns to the public library
I was thinking about it last night, and remembered that some university libraries have short loans.
These are loans that have to be returned in 2, 3, 5 days or else there is a substancial fine. In our case it could be that the customer must return it by a due date or it is considered sold to them.
This is the attractive part of this idea the way I see it. A customer can get a magazine for a week and if they aren’t happy with it they can return it, but if they are they can have it.
I think it would work on the higher priced magazines.
Personally I think this is a no go area because, for example ,if you rented out a Woman’s Day for say $2.50 and they brought it back at the end of the week or in say four days time, why would anyone else want to rent a magazine that has been on the shelf for four days. People want magazines because of gossip or loyalty and you will find the maximum sale period is the first few days of the on sale period.
Then you have the cost of managing that scenario ?
Sorry Mark- a no go area.
David, I think the weekly gossip mags may not work well in this scenario as you say, but more specialised and longer issue mags may work.
who in the hell has time to do all that rubbish
what a ridiculous idea, what about all the publishers that will lose sales? and then there would be agents who would still return a magazine that had been rented out. Complete waste of time and probably illegal
Kylie, Thanks for the feedback. We can focus on the idea itself or the idea of flipping the model. The latter is what I was focused on. mark