Melbourne Trader, the first Trading Post replacement, distributed with the Melbourne Observer, hit the streets a week ago. Former Managing Director of The Age, Stuart Simson is talking up his plans to launch Trading Mart into the classifieds space.
Outside of a common cover price, the two offers are quite different. The Observer offer is made on the back of a successful weekly newspaper with a history of free classifieds. The Trading Mart offer is the traditional Trading Post offer – pay only for ads which generate a sale.
Classified advertisements have moved online worldwide and they are unlikely to return to print in a stand alone form like the Trading Post. Trawling a newspaper for items to buy or sell is so yesterday and so environmentally unfriendly. People like the ability to search and other facilities with an online model. Look at the success of craigslist in the US and elsewhere. Many say it is a newspaper killer. While I disagree, it has become a lightening rod for drawing everyday classified online.
I think that the free classifieds offer with the Melbourne Observer will work because of already strong distribution and a loyal customer base. The keys are free ads and that they are included within the existing successful product.
I am skeptical about the prospects for Trading Mart because of the considerable capital required to launch, that it is a stand alone product without any other traffic drivers and that they appear to be relying on newsagents to drive advertisement acquisition.
I am biased against print when it comes to classifieds. After considerable research, I spent in excess of $750,000 on FindIt between 2005 and 2006. FindIt was an online classified model to be launched in partnership with newsagents. Despite attracting in excess of 20,000 advertisements and a hundred or so genuinely supportive newsagents, I pulled the plug because we did not have sufficient newsagent support to reach the critical mass necessary and because we had made a mistake in how we connected online classifieds with a bricks and mortar retail network.
While newsagencies are a natural hub for a classified offering to the less online-connected demographic, they will need to demonstrate genuine engagement for a stand alone classified offer to work – far more engagement than ever before and beyond just selling the newspapers. If they want the traffic from Melbourne Observer and Trading Mart sales, they need to ensure their success on a variety of fronts.
Mark, regarding newsagents doing the classified admin work, was there much, or any, consultation with newsagents? For example, is paperwork (proformas etc) available in time for launch?
Which reminds me – we had two people come in for two completely different ad categories, having been told to come to us by the publishers when they called up to place their ads.
Noooooo.
Off the topic a little, I have just had three children in my store (unsupervised) touching EVERYTHING, being noisy, playing with musical cards for about 15 minutes while Daddy was at the chemist next door. These children were all under the age of 10, two girls and a boy.
I wouls like to know how other people handle this sort of situation. I must admit I watched them like a hawk and gave Daddy a very disapproving look.
This was followed very closely by a lady and her two grandchildren with sticky fingers and melting ice cream……
A bit like owners of a business a couple of doors down who send their little kids here. Unsupervised. GRRRRR
throw em’out and when the mother elephant comes back to gore you advise her of the kidnapping of an unsupervised child in a WA shopping centre a few years back where she was taken to the toilets and raped. You are not a defacto childcare centre
And to top off my “wonderful” afternoon, I had another child break some of our christmas decorations – glass everywhere!!! Mum was too busy looking at the musical cards to pay attention to her child destroying my shop!!!
Arrrhhhhhh…. think I need to go home now.
Our policy is to firmly but politely tell the child to go stand with the parent and if the parent gets in a huff then we advise them again firmly but politely that they will need to supervise the child at all times for the own childs safety. We do not allow unsupervised children under 10 in our store unless they have a specific item they need to buy.
We find the only parents that get aggressive are the ones that should not be parents in the first place because they don’t care what happens to thier child, like has been stated here children get taken in a split second and this is’nt going to happen in my shop.
would it be the shops fault if something happens to an unsupervised child left by their parents?
and on another note, how do you manage elderly people in scooters or mobility devices who…well, zoom through the shop, and damage parts of the shop (though not on purpose of course)
We have had parents try to blame me when thier child scaled a book shelf while they were standing near by and reading and then fell off, they even went for compo. This is why we do not allow unsupervised kids in the shop and are hard on kids running wild, it took our insurance 6 months to prove we were not at fault, but it was tuff. I don’t know about other newsagencies but in our shop is not designed to be overly child friendly, it is designed for adults.