I have received some interesting calls in response to my blog post yesterday about renting magazines. The post was meant to be more about getting us to think outside the traditional when it comes to our businesses. I can think of many reasons renting magazines will not work just as I can think of reasons other innovative ideas will not work. My interest in the post was more from the perspective of being open to exploring a radical idea for its is out of that process that other good ideas can spring.
Thinking about this more, what about if you offered the rentals at full price, and then when they return them you offer credit equivalent to your profit margin.
i.e. if a customer rents and pays you for a magazine with a face price of $5 which costs you $3, when they return the magazine within a certain time frame you give them back $2. (I don’t know what your margins are so maybe you could let me know an average here) Specify a time frame for the returns e.g. 2-3 days for weekly magazines and 1 week for monthly mags.
This way you are not out any cost for the used magazine, and the customer is likely to spend that $2 on something else in the store as well. You would be building up regular customers who visit your stores more often. It has potential but could be more work than it’s worth.