We found ourselves with two issues of Street Commodores because of an overlap in supply. We had one pocket allocated to the title and so decided to early return the oldest issue.
Newsagents can’t create space out of nothing. Especially at Christmas – there is no room at the Inn. Magazine departments are full in just about every newsagency so a publisher putting another title into the channel is trying to grab space which does not exist.
Think about this all publishers please. Even playing with on sale dates leaving a title on sale for a couple of weeks longer creates a space problem.
While magazine sales are down year on year, actual supply to newsagencies is not. This is one reason newsagents get angry about the supply model.
As new issues come out, the old issues are removed from the shelf, regardless of recall date. This is mainly a space issue but also to avoid confusion for customers. Of course, there’s the odd exception like BHG where we have been asked to keep 2 issues on sale together. Even so, display still depends on sales history and space limitations.
No room at the inn … indeed.
Spot on Wendy. One magazine publisher in particular is a serial offender of overlapping on sale and recall dates. We do as you with similar exceptions, a new edition means the older one is immediately returned. This same publisher also abuses our magazine space buy bagging three magazines together for almost every magazine they supply us. We do not have the pockets to cope with this and contrary to their data customers do not appreciate their magazines presented in this manner. We have had some very strong complaints about one particular magazine being included with every other title the publisher supplies. Customers do not want 3-4 copies of the same magazine. Please take some notice of this, I am sure that I am not the only retailer finding this a problem.
This is an ongoing problem and I have no choice due to space than take the old copy off the shelf. The ones that really annoy me are when they use alternate names for basically the same mag. eg OZbike/OZ biker nation And expect you to have both on the shelf.The current issue of “OZ biker nation” is 371 and “OZbike” is 372 the next issue of “OZ biker nation” will be 373 and “Ozbike” 374 do they think we haven’t worked this out. Also I don’t care if it called “Adorable Bags” or “Fabulous Bags” Its the same bloody Magazine.