June off to a good start and looks set to continue the trend of a good quarter so far. We compare performance against ourselves and our category of business in the shopping centre – the landlord publishes retail category results.
The categories performing the best are those on which we focus attention: magazines (up 12%), cards (up 6%), gifts (up 214%), stationery (up 23%) ink (up 91%). These are all off healthy bases.
We are thrilled that traffic is up 6% yet sales are up 13%. Our focus on deepening the basket is paying off. We are also chasing balance across categories. For example, a year ago gifts accounted for 2.92% of our sales. Today, they account for 9.66%. We are wary of turning the newsagency into a gift shop and so are managing the growth within our goals. Stationery sits at 7.85% of sales, up from 7.18% a year earlier. Ink is closer to where we want it at 7.55% of sales, up from 3.41% a year earlier.
While growth is vital to any newsagency, balance across our various product categories is vital. A good balance will ensure a more sustainable business. I want a business where I am not relying on one or two product categories or one or two other factors to generate the majority of our shopper traffic.
We all have levers we can pull in our businesses through buying, merchandising, shop-floor management and external marketing. Today more than at any time in our past we need to do this. Relying on suppliers doing this for us will fail our businesses.