We know that shoppers at our Forest Hill store like dogs and cats. We know this from sales of calendars, books, pads and rocks (with cats painted on them). So, this weekend just gone we decided to place four mini books at the counter – dog and cat books.
Look at the photo and you can see them placed on the right hand corner of the glass counter top. Just below we have our cat pads.
We sold enough books to make the tactical placement worth it. Each sale was in addition to the main item(s) purchased – newspapers, cards, magazines and or lottery products.
In some cases we sold books and a pad together. Many sales were to customers buying a single newspaper or a single card … a nice extension to the basket and a nice additional margin on the sale. We made $2.17 off of each mini book sold. Add that to the less than 50 cents we made selling each newspaper.
I appreciate that the part of the counter in the photo may look cluttered, it is not compared to many newsagencies I visit. It is structured. There is not much else on the counter, certainly nothing else in this counter position.
While newsagents will not be able to retire on the money made from putting these $3.95 cat and dog books at the counter, do this every day with careful consideration and we will.
We have wonderful traffic in newsagencies from newspapers, magazines, cards and lotteries. Too often, we fail to leverage that traffic and therefore achieve the full sales potential available to us.
We have taken the four books off the counter for the busier Monday traffic. However, we are looking at how to leverage the opportunity in busy periods without encroaching on counter surfance space.
Thanks for another master class Mark. This is an easy idea to copy. Until recently I had only ever used the counter to put stuff I could not put anywhere else. You have changed this old duck to look at the counter differently.