I feel for newsagents who sell lottery products as they would have had additional challenges yesterday with Powerball at $30 million and handling the first Thursday delivery of magazines.
I suspect the newsagencies with larger magazine departments will need a few weeks to settle in operationally with the changes. I know we will. There are many factors in addition to getting stock out: promotional displays, processing returns, placement management and setting the shop for the weekend. This is work that was spread over two days with one of those days being regular hours.
It will take a couple of months for us to see any change in traffic caused by the change. That said, magazine sales yesterday were up but Wednesday and Thursday combined were down on what we usually experience across the two days. This will be something to check on in a couple of months.
I wish I had been handling my magazines. They still have not arrived at 9.30am Friday. Our delivery day was Thursday and I was told I would still get them Thursday. Still waiting…
They have arrived – 10am Friday. Happy Joy . Not.
Surprisingly yesterday was not as bad as I expected and Wednesday was busier than I expected.
Lotto was busy, but not crazy.
It was actually nice working two days straight without magazine delivery, I feel I have caught up on some unfinished tasks.
Friday is one of our busier mornings with shop/delivery customers so it is good not to have to worry about magazines.
May even save a bit on wages.
I was against this change of delivery day but I think I may come to like it, I know for certain that 2 days instead of 3 will suit my business.
Jenny remote newsagents just have to suck it up. Everyone we deal with seems to expect us to be more resilient but it is a heavy load to carry and we are constantly struggling with this disregard. It comes with not being in the majority.
Carol, don’t waste any energy on the publishers or the distributors. I have been in the industry for 35 years and you
JUST WON’T WIN and you will use up your
most valuable resource – YOU.
Off topic but this morning we had a ticketek “hot sell” morning with Beyonce.
I came early so that I could take the details of all the people waiting outside my shop for tickets – then gave them a check ticket to enable them to line up in order at 10 am but to go and have a coffee (it was freezing) before they came back.
10 am arrived and we could not sell any tickets – they were all sold out? This does my business harm and Ticketek surely should inform us (on the screen in front of us) when this is likely to occur.
To face those people who had stayed overnight (some of the young ones) is just simply untenable.
Ticketek is another company who is just
using us up until such time as we have collated enough data on their system to totally ignore us.
At $1.50 per ticket who needs the agro?
BAD BEHAVIOUR TICKETEK – YOUR RECORD IS ABYSMAL.
Once again the word “agency” is used and abused by many.
Early results for Magazine sales in our store:
* Wednesday sales down 48%
* Thursday up 22%. (Includes 2new partwork launches)
* Friday up 19%
Three day period sales down 16% on last weeks sales. That is with the “Knit and Stitch”, “military Vehicles” and “Locomotives” partworks all launched this week.
Move away from Wednesday deliveries has already had a detrimental effect on our store.
Wed sales down 37%
Thurs sales up 72%
Fri sales down 13%
Dollar difference from this week to last week up 44 cents.
So far so good, hope it lasts.
going to be a hard one to measure for those with lotto , Thursday with the 30 million for the first week then next wed with the triple pay outs always drags in more customers .For us wed was down thursday way up and Friday was a big surprise best Friday in about 12 months for what ever reason ,I think it must have been the rain .
How are the new delivery days settling in for everyone. We don’t have Tatts and are finding that Wednesdays are improving to make up maybe 70-80% of lost magazine sales and at better margins. Thursdays are also much stronger with new staffing arrangements working well. Now if only the weekend end trade would show some consistency, maybe after the election.