A new customer asked us to get Molly Makes in for them. We’d never heard of the magazine before. Once we checked it out we decided to order two copies for the shelves. These sold in days so we placed a standing order for five. The next issue came in and we quickly sold all five copies. Now, we are increasing the standing order to seven.
One reason newsagents are loath to do this is because they think it only encourages magazine distributors to send even more stock. I understand that. Poor behaviour by magazine distributor gets in the way of us being more proactive at growing sales for special interest titles like Molly Makes. These titles are key to our future in magazines.
Mollie Makes is a hit in my store also, I put some Frankie near it in the craft section. Same customers also like Peppermint Pretty Crafty (Network Code 05612) and Making magazine ( Gotch 30961) and I also stock Selvedge for the more affluent customer (Gotch 30924). All these magazines have a quality feel and design and I think the customer likes the idea that they are getting almost a “book” or keepsake for their money. These customers are not the type of folk who buy NW, Who, T5, THL,WD or NI, and probably not the Womans Weekly either.
We’ve carried this mag since Aug 11 and sales continue to grow. Our customers love it so much some of them have converted to the Air Freight editions.