The Future Forum in Sydney today has the wrong people talking about the future of print. Newsagents could present this forum with excellent ideas on how to grow over the counter sales of the print product.
Too many newsagents sell out prior to midday and publishers no longer respond to sell puts and looming sell outs in a timely fashion.
Publishers cut supply to newsagents yet increase supply to nearby supermarkets yet it is newsagents who are more likely to proactively engage in the product.
Publishers run promotions, like the Attenborough DVDs, and get supply wrong, leaving customers disgruntled.
Publishers chase expensive home delivery customers, lavishing discounts and gifts on them yet offer no reward to retail newsagents for growth they can achieve.
I have written about this many times here, here, here, here, here and here. If publishers listened to and worked with newsagents they would sell more newspapers. My question is: do they want this?
For decades I have pitched ideas to publishers. While I accept that they have the right to choose how they invest in their product, the results are not good. I am certain that a modest investment could achieve a far better result than their tired campaigns achieve over the long term for their challenged product.
I want to sell more newspapers as do other retail newsagents. This alignment with what should be a core desire of publishers has been a hitherto missed opportunity in Australia.
We are always running out of product. The publishers “marketers” run a promotion to increase sales whilst the distribution side reduces supplies to reduce “waste”. We end up with higher demand and lower product numbers to sell..
Result- disgruntled would be purchaser and newsagent.
The amazing part of this is that FREE newspapers are been supplied to Mac Donalds etc which are been thrown out as no one can be bothered to offer them to customers whilst our are been cut to save costs. Try McDonalds when they are offering a FREE paper and often the only way you get it is by asking. Yet they reduce the numbers to the newsagent who is SELLING it to REDUCE costs. Laughable if it wasnt so sad.
Yes, papers do have their place but until someone grows something and they get over this protected approach to supply where News/Fairfax dictate supply to an agent who intern uses even less logic to dictate supply to “sub agents” because of some centuries old agreement that should have been binned when the industry was deregulated, it just aint going to happen.