Australia Post’s 66% decline in profit over the last year is bad news for newsagents.
As the organisation battles a decline in the use of its traditional mail services, it is turning to other revenue opportunities, leveraging off its ubiquitous brand.
These other opportunities will include pursuing growth in retail. As Coles supermarkets are finding, there is money to be made in targeting key newsagency categories in their corporate stores.
Australia Post has been half assed in their pursuit of greeting cards, too expensive on ink and haphazard on stationery. These are three key areas where I would expect to see significant change in the next year.
While I see such activity as outside the spirit of the legislation under which Australia Post operates, politicians of all sides have demonstrated a lack of appetite to address this and stop the government protected monopoly from competing against family owned businesses which are near their corporate stores. Newsagents have not pressed their case well. This must change.
John Durie writing at The Australian today has an interesting perspective on the Australia Post situation.
Why do Govt owned operations need to make a profit, they should be measuring how they perform on their services ie mail delivery not trying to turn a profit . Excecutives should be paid on this performance not profit outcomes. This effects more than just newsagents there are plenty of other small businesses that are hurting from Aust Post.
post office should be a bank to compete with the big 4 to make them more competitive and effecient and give a deserve service to all their customers. in other part of the world post office is also a bank. why not australia?
australia is a backward country in many ways.
As one who has been engaged by post over the past 10 months to help turn the bloated monopolistic ship around the insights are staggering.
David – I think your comments will be misinterpreted. Post, though its monopolistic and non business attitude has in fact not been making money. As mark has said they have walked all over small businesses such as Newsagencies and gone completely outside of their core charter – why becease they can and have been allowd to.
Eric – If you look at Ahmeds background and also the path Kiwi Post undertook then this may be the logical future direction.
If this direction is taken then for us there is considerable potential to leverage of what they do to increase our foot traffic and revenue streams.
We know that the ore charter of post is the delivery of mail and we also know that this is declining. However, we also know that customers for some time to come will still need outlets for these services and the current retail and distribution model used by post will not be ecconomically sustainable.
This is where our opportunity should sit. If some smart people enagaged with post to develop alternate distribution and service stratagies through channels such as us it could provide a win win for all.
From discussions I have had, this is not out of the realms of possibility and one that would not happe over night, but would be a longer term journey.
Newsagents need to:
1. Adjust their model to better compete with a reinvigorated Australia Post retail offer.
2. Look at what Aust. Post does today which we could take on.
3. More successfully lobby politicians on a change to the act under which Australia Post operates.
What “Post Insider” has to say is quite interesting. If newsagents could all become the old styled in conjuctionPost Office Agencies we would become large, extremely viable businesses for the long term. This would give us loads more traffic via agency work thus making more profitable businesses across all departments. If I am reading into “Post Insiders” comments correctly, this is the ideal scenario for VANA to become relevant again by remaining a conduit between newsagencies, publishers and a new agency opportunity with Post. Come on guys, it has potential and is probably easier and more likely to produce a positive outcome than going head to head with Pst. Woth consideration me thinketh.
Brendan , what you’re saying is very true. I’m an inconjunction LPO/Newsagency and the benefits are quite notable.
TBH thats the path I think newsagencies will have to take in the future – some form of pairing with another business from which both can enjoy benefits and synergies.
I read in the paper today that Aust post will have to close stores because of dropping postal sales. To me it seems that Aust post has lost its way and is trying to be everything Except what it is supposed to be, that is a mail service.
I do not go to Aust post to send parcels anymore because of the line up of people wanting to recharge phones or ask questions about gift cards/stationery that the staff behind the counter have no idea about and have to hold a staff meeting to get an answer.
Maybe instead of trying to sell copy paper and other crap to post box holders they should try and encourage people to start sending more mail, after all is that not what postal services are there for, not be a proxy retail shop.
To me they started losing customers once they stopped focusing on the core business.
luke,
they are saying on tv they are going to sell more variety of retail products to attract more customers.L0L
HAVE YOU SEEN THE FRIGGING RECENT INCREASES IN THE COST OF PARCELS??? NO WONDER PEOPLE SEEK ALTERNATIVES, BUT THE POST OFFICE WANTS TO MILK THIS SECTOR BY JACKING UP PRICES IN EXCESS OF INFLATION. THE POST OFFICE IS ONE OF THE CAUSES OF THE INFLATION WE SEE IN NON-FOOD ITEMS & SERVICES!
Aus Post “parcel” is what is keeping it in the black. Take that away & watch it all fall apart.
We have seen an increase in the number of couriers getting about, because of the increase in parcel rates from Aus Post.