In a newsagency recently I noticed a selection of fax rolls on a shelf and available for purchase. I was surprised since we stopped selling fax rolls in my newsagency two or three years ago.
While there is demand for fax rolls, it is not sufficient for us to warrant the stock investment. Instead, we offer to get in any fax rolls a customer wants. Given the range of roll sizes, this is a better course of action.
If I did carry fax rolls I’d have a mark up of 300% or more to reflect the long time fax rolls will sit waiting to be purchased.
Hey, Australians think newsagencies are expensive so why not meet the expectation – especially for hard to source items that turn slowly?
If we are to be a retailer of last resort, we need to embrace this as a value proposition, pricing the last resort type items to reflect the service we provide our customers. This is how diamonds are priced so why not humble stationery items which shoppers visit newsagents for because they can’t find them elsewhere?
I am all for newsagents stocking hard to get stationery items. However, those who do need to do so with a price model which reflects the service.
I have talked to newsagents about this recently, the need to price items, stationery particularly, in a way which reflects time on the shelf and ease of availability of the item elsewhere.
We need to shake off the fear of being as expensive as shoppers expect us to be.
We have been caught with a number of these fax rolls that were selling a few years back. There is one that we keep in stock and sell regularly to a fellow tenant in the centre but as per your suggestion the others will all suffer a price rise tomorrow.
What’s the point of increasing the price of old, slow/not moving stock.
If you cant sell a fax roll at $3, what makes you think you can sell that same fax roll at $5 ?
Why not just dump it and use that space for something you know you can sell ?
Why deliberately carry dead stock, and then make it even ‘deader’ by increasing the price.
Obviously there is no market for that/those fax rolls or they they wouldn’t be hogging your shelf space now.
Drop them, and offer your customers something they want and that you can sell.
Just my thoughts.
Lance, I think it’s wrong to assume stock is dead because of price. My post is about stock newsagents knowingly carry which turns slowly – I say because we are considered expensive then meet that expectation.
It’s a reasonable business decision. Just like a decision to not carry slower moving stationery items.
I was trying to point out that newsagents carrying slow turning stock and applying the usual stationery markup are doing half the job.
Lance, I have some old fax rolls in store that used to sell regularly. If a customer want one and I have carried the stock for a longer than normal time them the stock owes me a better than usual return. This is an item purchased from need not impulse and is probably very hard to find now. If it was a gift line or such the opposite would apply and it would be heavily discounted to move it but this won’t work with NEED items as they will only be purchased because they they are needed.