I’d be interested in hearing from any newsagents selling magazines for more than there cover price and thereby achieving an above-average GP. Either comment here or send me a private message.
As more newsagents venture into new product categories, the 25% we make on magazines comes under greater scrutiny.
While magazines can generate excellent traffic and thereby provide a broader value than they GP themselves deliver, GP of between 50% and 75% on other products in attention-grabbing for newsagents. Once way newsagents can address this is to charge more than the cover price.
I would have thought that charging more than the cover price would create many bad vibes from customers and brand your business as that expensive b******. However I am certainly reducing space for mags and putting in better margin products.
I fail to understand how mags can be offered at a better price to smaller outlets or individuals than they are offered to newsagents as per your Valentines day offer. Surely the best deals should be given to the outlets that are most likley to sell your product. It is like the Holden dealer been offered Fords at a better price than Ford dealers. I dont get it.
I noted the retailer on Hamilton Island was charging a premium on mags, Im assuming an extra freight cost was being applied to them
A newsagent near us used to add a dollar to imported mags for a while, we heard about it a lot from his customers who came to us in droves, whinged, and gave us their business, ongoing. I believe he may have stopped doing it now, I haven’t gone in to his store to check
I was always of the understanding that we
could UNDERCUT our prices but we were
under price control and COULD NOT PUT
THE PRICES UP on magazines.
Correct me if I am wrong but that’s what
used to happen.
I think it is in our contracts with GG and Network.
I had IPS people here today to advise me
with magazines for our new tenancy which is going to be much smaller than our present tenancy in the shopping centre.
I was very pleased to see that my sell-through rate with IPS was 71% which is
way way better than the other two companies.
I find IPS an excellent company with whom to deal. The sell-through rate is
a part of the retailer software and I find it
very very good.
It gives the distributors a very accurate account of what is selling and what is not
which must be advantageous to us both.
It was an interesting dialogue with IPS –
we talked at length about increasing the % profit on magazines – making some of
the bi/monthly and tri/monthly and annual
titles firmsale (with increased %’s) and I
considered it to be very informative.
If all the publishers were to take this cooperative approach we might save this
industry. We need cooperatiion and innovation and we need it NOW!!!!
Coming from a consumer point of a view, I think magazines are already priced pretty highly and I can only afford a few a month. My favorite magazines are international titles such as Wired which can get fairly costly. To me raising prices would just force consumers elsewhere like specialists magazine stores such as MagNation in the Melbourne CBD.