The interest by some newsagents in participating in a tilt at Darrell Lea received more media coverage yesterday. Several other fairfax outlets ran the story and I did a couple of radio interviews before heading overseas on business for a couple of days.
Interest has been formally registered with PPB. Newsagents need to put their hand up if they are interested as I noted Monday:
Newsagents who would be prepared to invest in a consortium to bid for Darrell Lea need to register now. To get a seat at the table to consider being part of an acquisition we need to know how serious newsagents are.
So, without obligating you to anything, please email me at mark@towersystems.com.au with your contact details and the amount you would invest if the opportunity met your requirements.
I appreciate it’s a long-shot query. However, given the independent structure of the channel I need to get something more solid than voted on a poll before engaging a lawyer to seek to get a seat at the table.
This is the moment for newsagents to put up or shut up on Darrell Lea.
Congratulations Mark on keeping newsagents in the news and relevant.
I would like to comment on a quote taken from the article where you said that loyal Darrell Lea customers got confused about what the brand stood for in regard to the proliferation of it’s products through a variety of retailers. Surely the newspaper companies have taken a similar approach (with might I say a similar result) by supplying their product to every cafe/truckstop/supermarket instead of restricting supply to newsagents only and threating removal of product to those of us who don’t promote and/or display as they would like them displayed.
Thanks Steve. You are absolutely right. It’s a common mistake made by suppliers in a bunch of sectors.