Newsagents should check their shelves and see whether they have these titles: Green Garden & Home, Backyard & Garden Design Ideas, Backyard Landscapes, Good Garden Design and Outdoor Entertaining. They are all from Universal Magazines, part of their Backyard range and they all fit within a small category niche within the magazine department.
Five titles from one publisher makes it difficult for other publishers in this niche. It makes me wonder if this is a strategy from Universal, publish a bunch of titles in a niche as a kind of land grab. That is only speculation though as I am not privy to their strategy.
I’d encourage newsagents to check their shelves and then check sales data. If you have these five titles or even four, you have to ask yourself if you could achieve the same sales with one or two titles less.
Given that a magazine pocket in a shopping centre newsagency needs to return at between $8.00 and $15.00 a month in margin to cover its costs, it is appropriate that we ask ourselves if we have too many magazines in a niche.
Magazine distributors and magazine publishers have a commercial, ethical and moral obligation to newsagents to use our limited space efficiently. After all, we carry the cost of labour, real estate, returns freight and theft. In the case of titles with a greater than 30 day on-sale, like some of these, we also become the banker as it is our cash which is at risk which we have the stock.
The five magazines from Universal in the one niche is concerning. I have written about it this morning to ensure that newsagents are better informed.
But back to the question – Do newsagents have too many backyard and garden magazines? If I had all these five titles in my store the answer would be a resounding yes!
Universal have no real interest in helping. they really just care about their own business. maybe universal should ask Newsagnets permission before cluttering our shelves.
Mark – you should be one of the judges here http://mumbrella.com.au/maggies-judges-revealed-31460#comment-50823
Thanks Ken. Awards have more respect when judges are genuinely independent of those under consideration. The same is true for the newsagency channel.
Mark I’d really like to know if newsagents want several magazines in a category from the same publisher or fewer better magazines. This blog seems to have atracted limited response.
i have emailed universal mags in the past and they do not give to hoots about over supply or to many of the same category not once have i received a reply .As with any tittle i will give it a go but i will also early return it at the end of the month if it does not perform, and for the unfortunate ones that do come in on the last day of the month and there are other tittles eg the gardening section i will send back if it does not have a good sales history.
Dirk I certainly don’t want multiple titles in the one category from the one publisher.
I suspect that newsagents are not commenting because they don’t understand the implications for their business.
The problem as I see it is that space is finite. A publisher of size could squeeze or challenge a smaller competitor in their niche by publishing multiple titles. Since we cannot easily control the title mix and access to our valuable space, titles from weaker publishers will soon fade.
Shaun, We’ve emailed Express, same issue, same result.
Dirk no I don’t want this. I was not aware of a publisher flooding a category until Mark brought it to my attention.
Outside of early returning I feel helpless to stop this.
Newsagents need to know who is flooding, who is not and why. Mark is right. A publisher of size could squeeze a competitor in thier niche. It hapens all the time. I don’t publish a gardening magazine I do know a small publsher who this month has published in this niche so I’m not surprised to see flooding by thier competitor. Newsagents need to understand there is more to the over supply of magazines. I’m of the school that believes a publisher should simply publish a better magazine to achieve a better sell through rate. That benifits all. I’m one of the publishers who has spoken to mark and would like to attend a meeting of newsagents who want to start change. I have several ideas that I feel would go a long way to benifit newsagents and publishers alike.
Oversupply by a single publisher could be viewed as anti-competative behaviour. If enough data was gathered that supported the theory, such a case might may be worth putting before the ACCC – if only to send a message to certain publishers.
Good point Jarryd. Education is important. One of the goals of the blog post was to bring to the attention of newsagents the number of titles from one publisher in a single niche.
I would like to think that we newsagents could somehow stop our retail real estate being used in a way which appears to have the goal of squeezing out publisher competitors.
How many more situations are there like this? I mean, I would not have realised that I had five titles from one publisher in one category had it not been for this blog. Stupid me I guess.
So, how many more like this?
Have a quick look. You’ll recognise the logos in the bottom left corner of the cover of two of them with monotonous regularity.