Over the last few days I have been able to visit more than thirty independent newsagency businesses in and around London. I saw this sign in only one. No one was browsing the magazine range – this is probably more to do with the time of day than the sign. To be fair, there was limited space and even one person browsing would certainly disrupt customer access. That said, this barrier to browsing is not a point of difference I’d want.
One of the points of difference we newsagents offer is easy shopper access to magazine range. Browsing is key to this. If we push back against browsing there is no doubt it will hurt sales.
Beyond browsing, the diversity between newsagency businesses I have seen is considerable. It’s been three years since I last looked at newsagencies in London and my feeling is that there are better businesses today.
Sure there are convenience store type operations which dabble in a range of categories. However, I have seen more newsagencies focused on one or two core product categories and owning these as their point of difference.
More than half of the newsagencies I visited looked good and presented well on the high street.
Like in Australia however, the overall differences between these businesses with a common shingle is considerable.
I can understand why english newsagents have that signage. The english backpackers are my worst, fold the mags around, a group of 6 or 7 around the stands reading not letting any one near, I caught a couple of them on the floor thay had gone & got their coffee & cake to make a picnic of it, phographing with their phones the jobs in the papers and they always drop the mags on the flat stack after they read them so as not to get mixed up with the unread ones