Check out the Tweet from Tatts Tuesday promoting the purchase of OzLotto $10 million lottery tickets direct from them. Tatts could have easily supported its retail network in the tweet. Tatts retailers are required to invest heaving in the tatts brand. The least tatts could do would be to reciprocate in support through social media.
A recent announcement from Tatts on-line is that you can now set and forget. If you play regular tickets each week and are registered on-line, Tatts will play your games automatically for you with no input from yourself and just debit your account. Don’t know what happens if there is no money in your account.
Craig if they do with other online businesses do, they will allow customers to setup a secondary stream of funds.
Make no mistake the Tatts play is to increase the contribution online gambling makes to their business.
No disagreement from me.
We need to step back and add some perspective to this discussion. I presume you were trying to say “Tatts retailers are required to invest heavily in the Tatts brand” For my business the Golden Casket franchise is invaluable. I was happy to outlay $40,000 eighteen months ago to install the new image in my newsagency. Its contemporary, smart, and stands out like the proverbial in the shopping centre.
Just to illustrate my point on how valuable the franchise is lets do some maths. The leasing cost to me of the area used by the Golden Casket franchise is about $9,000 per year. If we extrapolate this over 10 years and add in the cost of the new image this comes to $130,000. Now looking at another department such as mags, the leasing cost of the area used for mags is about $23,000 per year. Extrapolate this over 10 years and we get a lease cost of $230,000.
To get the full picture, if we look at the return from Golden Casket products compared to mags, in my business its four times that of mags.
While I would prefer Tatts did not promote their online services, its an inevitable evolution of a mature business. Even with its focus on online products the Golden Casket franchise is probably the most cost effective franchises that I will ever be involved in.
You are correct in what you say Gary but you can look it another way also. You are in a shopping centre but what about the small newsagency in a rural area who also has to spend $30 – $40k on a new shopfit. A years commission or more maybe. Think about magazines. If you sold $320K worth of magazines per year grossing $80K profit would be happy being forced to spend $80K on new fittings just for your mags?
Shayne and Gary you both make valid points. I have just had to fund just on a years gross commissions for the new retail image. Agreed it looks fantastic and in a Shopping Centre or metro high street it may well make a difference to traffic. In a small country town it does not. The reality is that no one is going to choose to drive at least 20mins. out of their way to come to my outlet because I have the new image (they do because of what we can offer overall). My question that remains unanswered from when I first took on the franchise is “Why can’t WE sell lottery products to our customers on line?”, why are we prohibited from utilising the technology that is clearly working for Tatts themselves. Just being told “that is just how it is” I don’t think is an adequate reason. Don’t get me wrong Tatts is extremely valuable to my business unfortunately it often feels like we are not so valuable to them.
Shayne/Michelle,
Thanks for your perspective. For my newsagency the cost of the fit out is only 20% of my annual commission so its definitely worth the investment.
I now fully appreciate the challenge you have with the cost of a new fit out.
As far as the comment on selling our lotto online, I get a feeling that this would be a logistical nightmare. With this in mind there are probably governing regulations that will prohibit this for this reason. I would be interested on knowing how you think it can work.