I heard from several newsagents yesterday concerned about the promotion of a digital and print offer that appears to be targeting digital seven days and print two days a week.
We will have three key membership options; digital plus weekend newspaper delivery, digital plus 7 day newspaper delivery or digital-only membership. The best value package is a digital and weekend print newspaper delivery costing only $2.50 a week for the first 12 weeks (then $5 per week at full price).
I can understand newsagents feeling nervous. The reality is that we need to run our newsagency businesses for the future we want and with the knowledge of these and other changes and challenges. This is what News and other publishers are doing with offers such as these. I don’t like them but I acknowledge I’d probably do the same thing if I were them.
There is a self fulfilling prophesy occurring here. The day gets closer when home deliveries will not be worth the effort. Same with supplies to sub agents. It is probable that many milkbars will be getting out of papers and magazines as no one will supply them. Some small retail only newsagents may also not get stock. Distribution agents can only react to the environment that they operate within.
Craig the crucial message is that newsagents need to run their businesses for themselves – with their own business plan the first priority. While this has always been the case, it is only recently that more are seeing it that way.
I agree Mark. The message i was trying to convey is that in some cases some small retail only newsagents may be in for a shock when there is not anyone prepared to supply them with Mags and papers due to the sales not reurning a profit to the distribution agent. Low sales + low margin + distribution costs = Loss
We are picking up more and more of these weekend only subscriptions and to be honest I am not too concerned.
We are planning now that if in a few years time we only do weekend home deliveries our business will adapt to that.
We will go back to less staff, less vehicles, smaller premises and just look at it as a part time business.
As long as we are in a good position financially this will give us a much better quality of life.
No matter how good your staff are distribution still controls your life.
Being in a rural area can have its challenges but today the DT was the slowest in sales along with some other items I can remember for a long time and a lot of the other shops in our small strip expressed the same through out today.
The shopping centre was like a ghost town.
Well I have now discovered one reason why. It seems News And Woolworths are running a promo that if you buy a DT at Woolworths you get $10 dollars off your grocery purchases today and Saturday. The Woolworths concerned is in the next largest town some 20k away.
The thing that really pisses me off is the fact that our CSR said she had no knowledge of this promo, as I said to her common courtesy would be to inform me so I could adjust our supplies for today and tomorrow, it also confirms to me News care little about the Newsagency channel and Woolworths care about no one.
Gregg there are two separate divisions in News from where promotional activity can flow: circulation and marketing. Often one does not know what the other is doing.