September has been an interesting month for newsagents. I have seen stores with excellent growth and others with dreadful figures. From what I see, it continues the patchy economic condidions we find ourselves in.
In our own case, we had a good month overall: books – down 17% (due to differences in sales cycles over the two years); calendars – up 14%; cards – down 16% (due to run down to a complete card relay and 25% supplier replacement yesterday); confectionery – up 2%; Gifts – up 83%; magazines – down 7%; ink – up 25%; stationery – down 24% (fluctuation in some corporate business). Overall traffic is up 3% but average sale value is down 10%.
We are moving to higher margin product and this is creating a healthier business.
In magazine categories, partworks is the big drop – if we take these out of the figures, the magazine department is down around 3%; food – down 22%, sport – down 18%; women’s interests – down 12%; women’s weeklies – down 3%; computers – down 29%; craft – down 17%.
Overall our sales were up 17% and traffic about the same as last Sept.
Gifts up 187%
(we introduced an ABC centre to our store and it is killing it)
Cards and wrap down 3%
Mags down 11%
papers down 8%
Stationery up 9%
Lotto up 2%
Cigs up 11%
Confectionery up 3%
Overall we are rapt at the results as the local council had decided to lay a new waterpipe out the fron door for a few weeks during the month god bless em.
Mark,
i have an island which is movable and located in front of the store which is used to display monthy and weekly mags roughly for 36 titles ( stack them high) and i never put these top sellers inside the store with the rest, for the past 14 years they are doing fine, but since this crisis i found my top sellers are down alot especially weeklies and i am thinking to get rid this island and replace this best location of the store with books (ABW) and others promotional products.
i lost confidence with weeklies and monthlies. i need to find some products to replace my loss.
Eric, I would never display the same products at the front of the newsagency for more than a week. Constant change here is crucial to our offer.
In terms of building margin, you need traffic generating products and basket building products. One brings people and the other gets the margin sales you want. Magazines can play a key role here if done well.
Books +66%
Cards/Wrap +9%
Cigs -9%
Conf + 7%
Scratchies +13%
Lotto +27%
Mags -7%
Mobile Phones/Recharge +23%
Papers 0%
Stationery +39%
Vids & DVD +819% New Line
It is good to see newsagents being so open about the performance of their business. You don’t hear this discussed at newsagent meetings.
My own newsagency is down in all departments except stationery. That is up 15%. magazines are down 10%, cards donw 5% and everything else in between these. We are in a small centre which is experiencing construction. I have not tried ink or books but think I will because of what I read here.
are the customers numbers down accordingly or is the dollar spend down?
g in our case traffic is down.
Just looking at our figures today on last year (because it’s dead!) and we are having a better day today than year.
Far less traffic but more spending. I can’t figure it out.
our total sales are up 18% which ia happy about we have introduced 5.95 novels and a range of kids books at 5.95 and our gifts are going well stationery is even up our customer no are up 5% but we are being bypassed in the next 12months so interested to see what happens then
My September was line ball with last year, even magazines which was a surprise. I put this down to my shop being in the country and picking up on some of the ideas from mark and other newsagents here.
we are in upper mid class area, but the customers are not spending:(