I’ve been looking at sales for the first two weeks of June and comparing them to the same period a year earlier. What is usually a quiet time of the year is good for us: cards up 16%; diaries up 22%; magazines up 1%; gifts up 500% (off an average base); plush up 12% (off a very high base).
Average sale value is up 10% and overall revenue up 6% off of flat traffic.
What we can see in the data is that our focus on cards, gifts and plush as traffic drivers is working. This has been our focus for some time – generating traffic from products we decide on for our business.
Plush, cards and gifts account for 39.5% of our sales – up from 26.4% for the same period a year earlier. This is the number I was most interested in as it reflects on the reinvention of the business. Such reinvention is vital for all newsagents, reinvention around conscious decisions we take on our businesses and the products we target for generating traffic.