A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Day: August 1, 2013

Newspaper era over – Barack Obama

In an interview distributed through Amazon, Barack Obama declares the newspaper era over The Hill reports. The AFR also has the story.  Here is some of what Obama is quoted as saying:

“You see that in every profession. You see that in journalism. It used to be there were local newspapers everywhere.

“If you wanted to be a journalist, you could really make a good living working for your hometown paper.

“Now you have a few newspapers that make a profit because they’re national brands, and journalists having to scramble to piece together a living, in some cases as freelancers and without the same benefits that they had in a regular job for a paper.”

“What’s true in journalism is true in manufacturing and is true in retail,” Mr Obama said.

“What we have to recognise is that those old times aren’t coming back.”

That’s right, the old times are not coming back. The future for all disrupted businesses is to to adopt to today’s reality and to create tomorrow’s opportunity.

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Newsagency challenges

Gift opportunity in Melbourne this weekend

Melbourne will be the city to be in for the next week with several related trade shows on covering gifts, homewares and related products. While the main show in town is the Gift Fair (the biggest of its type in Australia), the Home and Giving Fair is a place where you tend to see innovative products beyond the usual for the gift space.  The Life Instyle event is also interesting in terms of innovative products.

I know of newsagents who will be in Melbourne for five days to get around these events. Some will be there to be inspired and others will be there to buy up stock for the next six months or so. Some come with an amount to spend while others will buy on impulse.

The average spend I hear newsagents planning on spending is between $10,000 and $20,000. I mention this to provide context for newsagents who have never been to a gift fair before.

In 2008 I wrote here about the importance of gift fairs for newsagents and some at the time criticised that. History has shown that these gift fairs have become more important than any other trade event for newsagents.

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Gifts

All Books For Less in administration

T.B. CLARK BOOK BARGAINS PTY LTD, the company operating the All Books For Less retail group, has gone into external administration. Some stores are closed and some have already been taken over by other operators.  This will be good news for newsagents located near All Books For Less outlets.

Stand alone book retailing is tough. There is an opportunity for books in newsagencies.

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Book retailing

News promoting digital subscriptions

While News Limited is promoting print and digital packaged subscriptions, it feels like the real focus is the digital product since this has a considerably lower fulfilment cost for them. I’m guessing these ads are running in other News capital city titles around the country.

Encouraging migration from print to digital is what I’d be doing if I was News.

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Media disruption