Newsagents are often frustrated that their businesses are regarded as expensive. One way to combat this is to educate your staff about the price difference between key products in your newsagency and nearby competitors like Officeworks, stationery shops, supermarkets and convenience stores.
Choose ten popular everyday stationery items and get out of your newsagency and price company. Educate yourself about how competitive you are or are not … as the case may be.
Armed with factual information you can make some valuable business decisions.
If you are not cheaper, look at your buying and your margin and decide if you want to be the cheapest or if not the cheapest the outlet offering the best value.
If you are cheaper, make sure that every one of your employees knows this. Encourage them to work into their discussions with shoppers. Find a way to promote your price comparison results without starting a price war and without breaching your lease if you are in a major shopping centre.
It is hard work turning around public perception and we don’t have then unity or budget to match the Officeworks spend on their price positioning. But we have to start somewhere. I think that the best place to start is in your newsagency and then comparing with others. Knowledge is power. Armed with this you can make your newsagents to best value stationery destination in the area.
Imagine the value of a pitch around price and service. This would be a perfect win win for your newsagency and for the channel.
You have more control over stationery than just about any other department in your newsagency yet for many newsagents it provides the worst return on investment and the worst return on retail space.
We have let stationery business be taken from us for too long. We should make 2012 the year we fight back at the store and national level. There is no reason why we could not double the amount of stationery sold out of our businesses – people are buying this and plenty more from other outlets, why not us?