Newsagency businesses own many products which we do not treat any differently to those products which other retailers sell. These products we own, products which we almost have alone, present us with several opportunities.
We can price these products based on a scarcity of competition. We can use the certain traffic generated to sell other items. we can promote our businesses as the go to places for these items.
Road rules books are a good example of the products I am talking about here. They are a product people know newsagents carry. They would know that asking someone in a newsagency about one of these would be far easier than navigating any other retailer.
So, we need to know about all products like the road rules books. We need to embrace the opportunities in terms of sales, margin and allied sales we can achieve. We can do this by:
- Checking our prices for these items.
- Looking at product adjacencies.
- promoting the products to remind shoppers that we sell these products.
We bemoan that newsagencies have no products unique to the channel while there is a small coup of products which, in the minds of shoppers, are exclusive to us.
Must be a Victorian thing? I’ve never seen one for sale in NSW and i’m almost certain the only place you can buy a Road Users Handbook in NSW is in a motor registry office (or download it online).
We sell plenty of these and locate them with L & P plates, Directories and maps. A natural synergy together We also sell the Vic Roads Truck and Motorcycle books. The one for boat licensing is not stocked as it is free from Vic Roads and we were sick of justifying our price for it (it is not free for us to obtain). Having these products must also complement the motoring categories in our magazine range.