Click here to listen to the edition of You and Yours, a program on BBC Radio 4, which covered the challenges facing newsagents in the UK – where ten stores reportedly close each week.
While the plight of UK newsagents makes for sobering listening, it left me wondering how much you can blame external factors on your current situation. If we look at some of the external issues raised: new tobacco sales laws will not go away – all retailers are affected, supermarkets and other retailers will continue to change shopper habits and lure people from local shops and print media competition will reduce rather than increase – this helps competitors of newsagents.
The National Federation of Retail Newsagents covers their perspective of the program on their website.
We will not find a strong future through regulatory changes. Governments do not have the appetite for this, despite their professed support for small businesses.
No amount of local connection will not save many small CTNs, as they call them in the UK. Shoppers have shown that they want a more compelling reason to visit a small local shop other than that it is local. This is the world in which we exist.
UK newsagents which survive and grow will do so because of the what they do inside their businesses and not because of a right. What they do in the form of diversification, customer service and marketing is what will draw customers to their business. To try and save the channel by reversing regulatory changes will not work. Newsagents need to fix themselves first.
And before anyone questions what I have written here compared to my views on Australia Post … My issue with Australia Post is with the 865 government owned Post Shops which have diversified away from being post offices and converted into quasi-newsagencies over the last ten years. The government has no business taking card, book, stationery and other sales from independent newsagents.
ABOUT THE PHOTO: I took this in Birmingham a in 2006. Sandhu News is what we would call here in Australia a convenience store. Magazines, newspapers, food and cheap greeting cards. It is not what we would call a newsagency. However, my understanding is that this type of business accounts are the bulk of UK newsagencies. It was a good business, clean. It had, to my eye, mixed messages for the consumer and the feeling of cheap product.
MArk I really agree that the nub of the issue is the ‘mixed messages’ issue – which we call the Retail Proposition. Once we get that right, everything else will start goiung right.
And as you say, looking to an Association, The Government or anyone else is just another form of denial.
IF N-agents worked together, it will be easier and quicker, but I personally think that won’t happen. (Human nature prevails.)
Hum, I couldn’t listen to more than the first five minutes of the programme. It just reveals all that is wrong with the NFRN’s mind set.
That of the victim.
Big business and big Government is hurting us , please stop it or our small shops will have to close and just look 10 are closing every week.
Yes it is tough in the UK economy, but complaining about what is happening or being done to us wont change it.
Tobacco, too late to change the MPs view on this. The Display Ban will happen, at least small shops get 4 years to amend their business practice.
Newspaper and magazine distribution, I don’t have any significant supply issues as I deal with them when they arrive by talking to the people that can effect change.
Business model, when my wife and I bought our business 20 plus years ago it was a straight village CTN, but we have regularly invested in it and moved its focus to convenience.
Complaing about being a victim will only waste energy and end in failure as no one will listen.
Steve, thanks for commenting on this post. I was hoping you would.
It is good to get your perspective as a newsagent in the UK and directly experiencing these issues.
The last sentence of your comment is something we need to read and hold onto.
Steve pointed me in the direction of this posting. I think that local shops in the UK often send mixed messages to shoppers and this is an area that they need to consider more. Thanks for the feedback.
PS. Someone wrote to the Financial Times yesterday to praise Ricky Ponting for his great contribution to the just completed series and she was English.
Ah Ricky. Some say we lost it so we could win it again. Others say the Aussies are too busy counting their IPL cash. Others know we stuff it up from selection right through to game day play.
The double headed coins never helped either!