Are you located near Kenny’s Cardiology store?

Allied Brands, the business behind the Kenny’s Cardiology card and gift stores, is experiencing challenging times.  The Kenny’s business is suffering as a result.  Several company owned stores have been closed with more expected.  In July, the company had 47 stores and announced that it expected to close 10 of these.

If your newsagency is near a Kenny’s store, you may want to scope out the opportunity for increasing your focus on cards and gifts.

While it is a challenge to kick a competitor when they are down, in this instance newsagents could argue that it is fair.  Kenny’s opened around twenty years ago and took considerable greeting card business from newsagents.  Their difficulties today provide us with an opportunity to win some of this business back.

Newsagents can win back card business by becoming more actively engaged in the category.  While greeting cards deliver almost the best margin in a newsagency, newsagents are less engaged than with most other categories.  Some greeting card suppliers would argue that many newsagents are not engaged at all.

Here are my tips for creating a more competitive offer in the card category:

1. Talk to your card main card supplier and request a performance review.
2. Compare your supplier’s performance numbers with your own sales data.
3. Have slow moving items replaced by faster moving stock.
4. Carefully assess the performance of lifestyle cards against everyday.  Everyday sells significantly more in newsagencies that lifestyle.
5. Have your staff trained in putting out cards so that new stock gets on the shelves sooner.
6. Promote cards in all major seasonal displays.
7. Start a card of the week program – featuring a card which will appal to your customers at the counter.
8. Find ways to include cards in your high traffic area displays to drive impulse business.

The opportunity for newsagents reaches beyond what is happening with Kenny’s Cardiology.  Newsagencies have excellent traffic and it is easier to leverage this for additional card business than it is for a stand alone card and gift shop to attract a customer to purchase a card.

It’s business and we owe it to ourselves and the rest of the newsagency channel to leverage our excellent traffic for a greater share of the card and gift categories.