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If we are to promote a shop local pitch to our local communities we need to source locally made and locally connected products. This week I will draw attention to several local suppliers newsagents could consider. Stocking products from these and similarly local suppliers adds credibility to our shop local pitch. To me, local products are products made and / or designed in Australia. If my newsagency was in a country area my focus would be more on products sourced even closer to home.
Just Kiddin is a Melbourne based company run by a talented designer who sells her own designs in the form of tents and other products for kids. Their tents are terrific: easy to display (hang them from the ceiling), well packaged and of high quality. While major retailers have cheaper products, the Just Kiddin tents are seen by shoppers as far superior. In one of my newsagencies we have sold more than 60 tents in the last year – that’s close to $6,000 worth. They are a good fit with newsagents who sell toys, cards for kids and kids magazines – yep, just about anyone.
I first found the products at the Home and Giving Fair in Melbourne. The business owner and product designer was on the stand offering excellent insights into the products.
Just Kiddin has been a newsXpress preferred supplier for quite some time. They will sell to others.
Our address book sales are up from $61.95 for the first three weeks of June 2013 to $340.22 in the first three weeks of June 2014. This 449% increase in address book revenue has been driven by a small in-store promotion of our address book range – proving the value of promoting smaller profit offerings from the stationery department.
The promoting cost us little in the way of time and space yet the return was excellent. Our main focus was to let shoppers know we had a range. There was no big aisle-end display. There was also no special price offer.
Newsagents can increase stationery sales by focussing on pitching sought-after products in a way that encourages convenience shopping.
Small format kids magazines like K-Zone, D-Mag and Total Girl need to be displays with the fill magazine on show. This is especially true at school holidays time when we have more kids in our newsagencies. The gifts bagged with the magazines are more easily seen if the titles are on full cover display and not placed in the usual magazine fixtures in many newsagencies.
I urge newsagents to check today how they have these kids titles displayed.