Further to my blog post of five days ago about space challenges in the backyard space and my blog post of August 9 on the number of quilting titles, check out the photo taken yesterday in a Queensland newsagency. Based on return on shelf space and other criteria, I would expect your average newsagency to have no more than nine pockets of kitchen and bathroom titles. In the photo you can see five titles from one publisher, Universal Magazines in the category.
Only the newsagent, reviewing their sales data, could know if five kitchen and bathroom titles from Universal Magazines is too many for their business.
In my own newsagencies I would consider it at least two titles too many.
The current newsagency magazine distribution system does not provide newsagents with adequate tools to block the use of our retail space in this way. Our competitors – supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol outlets – all control access to their space.
In a shopping centre newsagency, each pocket needs to deliver a gross profit of at least $7 per month and usually more just to pay for the space. This is a tough ask if you have too many titles in a category all competing for the same interest. Hence my concerns about inefficient assortment of range.
As I have noted here before, I would like to see:
- Compensation for titles which do not achieve a minimum agreed sell through rate – I’d suggest 50% is a reasonable performance benchmark.
- A base fee paid for access to our real-estate and labour for titles outside the top 200.
- Better range control tools for newsagents and a guarantee from magazine distributors that there will be no knock-on consequences for cutting supply.
- The introduction of a magazine czar who has to approve any new title before it gains access to the newsagency channel.
I’d like to see more than these three points, especially relating to a retail real-estate land grab by one publisher to reduce space opportunities for another.
I agree,
All your points are valid, and desperately need to be explored. Its the only way our businesses will prosper.
Magazine CZAR? I havent thought of that before. Maybe i could be that person. I would guarantee that there would be some pain for publishers if i was the CZAR.!!
Keep the thread on this issue alive Mark, as this is a very important issue.
Chris
Reservoir
Chris and others get newsagents to read and comment on this. Publishers and distributors read this blog and it is important that they see newsagents building an understanding of this situation – beyond mere complaints.
No Complaints from me. I want proper action and research which i notice you have begun. Its imperative of everyone that is a newsagent to contribute to this thread and hopefully we can get the support of the Associations on board to help push this issue along.
The introduction of a magazine czar who has to approve any new title before it gains access to the newsagency channel.
this is a hard one as all areas are different i believe a simply email sent to all newsagents when a new mag comes out asking what allocation they want would be the way to go , yes it would be a lot of work for them but hey how much work do we do managing magazines that we never asked for or have cancelled many times in the past
I agree all publishers should have an agreed minimum sell through rate. 50% sounds very reasonable. If a number of newsagents agreed this was reasonable I could probably get several publishers to agree as well. If newsagents had accurate sell through figures provided by publishers then they could stock the magazine with confidence. To a large extent everyone is trying to run a business blind. I’m sure publishers interested in selling magazines would be happy with a code of conduct if they knew thier efforts to support newsagents resulted in newsagents supporting thier magazines. Publishers not agreeing would only not agree if they are flooding newsagents with magazines that do not sell. Could be a start guys. In a society where we should all be looking at our enviromental foot print how can anyone accept this practice of flooding newsagents with magazines that get returned to continue
Mark do you have any figures on how many newsganets have pos systems that would support sending back the relevent data compared to how many newsagents out there with out
Shaun
You make a good point!
With the technology at our (and the distributor’s) disposal it would be a relatively simple task to do what you suggest – we could also use XchangeIt if that was easier for the distributors. To process emailed or automatic responses by account number would be a fairly simple task however I fear that the data would be treated in a similar fashion to sales data if it did not suit the distributors. Whilst distributors have a “push” model as opposed to the newsagents ideal of managed supply based on sales we will never get treated as other than dumping grounds.
Shaun, The numbbers I have are:
Tower Systems – 1,700
POS Solutions – 600
Computerlink – 260
Access POS – 105
Others – 100
The Tower software can supply sales data, hourly, daily, weekly direct to any publisher – to provide immediate visibility of sales. I am sure others could do this too.
newsagents may also like to check the number of Simpsons comics and Mad magazines.
And Wedding Magazines!!
and tattoo, beading, quiltingand 4wd magazines
Talk about too many magazines, you should check out the craft magazines from Express Publications! http://shop.magstore.com.au/default.asp
This makes me very angry. Mark I made fun of your calls for a magazine czar once before. I now have a better understanding of why you were right.
It is little wonder that newsagents get cheesed of with Universal. Despite not selling a single copy of of “Classic Kitchens” the first time (and having it on sale for the full period), Network has sent a higher quantity in their reissue received today. The whole lot will be early returned as will others in this non-performing series.