Last Thursday, newsXpress opened a new concept corporate store at Knox City Shopping Centre in Melbourne. While not yet fully stocked and with some adjustments to be made, the first four days of trade have been most encouraging. Click here to see a video walk-through of the store.
This store is different to the traditional newsagency because of the floor space, product mix, flexible layout and the strong corporate image. This is a 130 sq m store, small for a shopping centre newsagency. The layout is designed to drive a greater per square metre return and customer contact efficiency than you would achieve with a traditional newsagency layout.
But there is more to this store that you’ll see from walking through. There are back end processes and in-store strategy which drive margin.
Is this the newsagency of the future? I doubt it because there is no end point to retail innovation. That said, this store reflects a considerable advancement on traditional newsagency layout, range and floor space efficiency.
Thanks to the design and build work by Interfit and their flexible and efficient space management system, we have a store which is completely flexible and which redefines a ‘newsagency’.
Disclosure: I am a 50% shareholder in this new concept store.
Hi Mark .How about a lay out so we can see where is what ,number of mag pockets &card pockets and do you have papers .After looking at the Express offers up to 53% off +give away ,how do these people thing we are going to remain with the same mag pockets and still be in bussiness ,same with the partworks .This need to change or newsagents will not look like newsagents .Network is no better 2 mags for $7.00 and i am sitting right on their check outs ,just cutting the bottom out of my sales and it is all their own work About to take 200 mag pockets out .had 1500 3 years a go now going down to 1000 second time i have cut pockets. Look at supernews are they realy in to selling mags
Looking at the video, it appears this store sells no newspapers or news magazines… is this more of a stationary shop? Is the “News” in “NewsXpress” delivered by WiFi to customers’ portable devices perhaps 😉
mc, The video was shot the morning the store opened. The newsagent supplying newspapers was not geared to supply for the opening. The magazine distributors had, by opening, only supplied around 10% of the planned supply for the store.