We achieved a 39% increase in unit sales as result of the Royal Wedding. To determine this figure I have only looked at magazine title which featured the Royal Wedding: New Idea, Woman’s Day, Grazia, Who, The Australian Women’s Weekly and OK!. I compared sales for the last week, Sunday through Saturday, and looked at the same week in 2010. I have not included one-shots. To enable us to reach our sales growth, we ran a policy of purchasing stock from nearby supermarkets to avoid sell-outs.
Magazine distributors and publishers should review newsagent performance, in particular sell-outs, to assess the performance of the newsagency channel compared to other channels. This analysis is especially important if my assertion that supermarkets were provided more than double the supply increase than newsagents.
Our sales were slightly up but we did not receive AWW until Monday this week (Far Nth Qld) and have only sold 2 copies – we normally would have sold half of our allocation by now. Part of Networks response was “As soon as a batch is printed it has been distributed to the state in greatest need of stock and then dispatched to agents.” our sales of this issue is obviously suffering.
AWW sold out.
However, WD & NI didn’t do well at all.
Then again, postmortem editions (this week) are doing quite well.
Weird.
I “respectfully” requested to double my supplies from 20 to 40 for Hello Magazine for last week, this week and next week and assured GG I would alter my supplies back to reflect my sales after the wedding. This morning got my “usual” supply and have of course, sold out already.
What really irks is that we received a special sheet of Hello reminding us that it was a special edition and telling us it is a BUMPER ISSUE.
It also said “supplies significantly increased in line with expected sales”
THIS WAS FALSE AS I DID NOT RECEIVE ANY EXTRAS EVEN AFTER SPECIFICALLY REQUESTING THEM
When returns are done via ediexchangeit GG would have known that I have NOT had any returns for the last 8 weeks for Hello magazine so it is particularly galling when they profess to be significantly increasing our supplies.
AWW is never going to sell out because we have missed the momentum of the wedding even though the merchandizer from ACP did a great job in our shop.
I think agents should be compensated for being compliant and the companies should assure those who are compliant of at least enough mags to ensure a returns factor so that we can gauge 400450our potential sales
June, I also rang GG 2 weeks ago to increase my Hello magazines for the Royal Wedding.
This morning, i received my normal allocation and no increase. I am disappointed, that my request couldnt be fulfilled. More sales lost!!
We got some extra supplies based on sales rate and as a result of the extra supplies sales ramped up, creating a positive extras scenario. A veritable virtuous loop. Across a typical set of magazine titles (eg AWW, WDA, NID, Who, OKW, etc) we were up over 60% versus the same week last May. Apart from the initial Sunday delivery fiasco we were satisfied with the support we got from our suppliers.
Just a thought in regard to newsagencies purchasing stock from supermarkets, it will be important that publishers are reminded to factor that in when comparing the sales performance of the 2 channels. Hopefully they can pick it up from all of those negative stock figures in xchangeit 😉
By buying mags from the supermarket, you are giving the distributors more reason to supply them over you.
They look at sales data and because you were not supplied the stock originally it is not included in your sales numbers. What they see is Coles is selling a shitload more then the newsagency based on supply and you have done all the work for them but have made no more money. Customer service is one thing but selling stock for zero profit is another.
Luke, that is one way to look at it. The other way is that you are committed to not losing a sale due to an out of stock of a popular title. It is a topic one could argue both sides on.
Luke took all mine back for a refund, they were not happy Jan
When i got the next lot
EVERY ONE THAT I GOT FROM COLES DAUGHTER WORKS THERE PARTIME (THEY PAY i DONT) SO I GET DISCOUNT. A CUSTOMER PURCHASED SOMTHING ELSE WITH IT SO NOT HAVING THE STOCK COULD HAVE COST ME A BASKET SALE EACH TIME
I WOULD NEVER BUY FROM THE DUOPOLY BECAUSE LUKE IS CORRECT.
Has anyone noticed that EWW which downloaded from Network this week and last week is supposedly from GG now or
so it says on network’s website.
When you try to return it through edi xchangeit/retailer it says it still belongs to
Network. Anyone know anything about this?
Averill, even if you returned the stock, you still have lost the sales from your sales data as network gets sales data on a daily basis and based on the initial onsale period the supermarkets looks like it sold heaps more then you so next time they get a bigger slice, it will also look that you took longer to sell your allocation then them, so you do not need as many copies in the initial drop next time.
I could be wrong but it’s the way they do things.
A regular SMH customer who has been away to country Victoria for the last week, told us this morning that a large motel/hotel in Wangaratta had a stack of either WD or NI at reception to give away. Is that where all the newsagent’s stock goes, too?
Sorry Averill, my comment was for D R, at least you made a slight profit but again your sales data is out as far as the supplier is concerned.
In the age when we are beaten over the head that our industry has corrupt data and this is the reason we cannot get the right supply at the right time, this does not help solve the problem.
Although the Royal Wedding prompted a fantastic sales boost and we had no initial problems with supply (unlike many others), customers are now completely over it. Why therefore would we need to receive yet more AWW last week and again today, when we still have not sold out of earlier allocations?? Sorry Network/ACP, but they are coming straight back!!