Another day and more reports from newsagents of magazine distributors sending additional titles which are NOT selling out.
Take a look at this example for Koori Mail – sent to me by a colleague. In the data you can see this newsagent has for all but one issue been experiencing 0% sell through yet the magazine distribution experts at Gordon and Gotch have increased supply by 200%.
The action of Gordon and Gotch on show here are shameful. No wonder newsagents despair about magazines.
I am sure the folks at Gotch will have an explanation. Newsagents are tired of excuses. We want supply based on the data.
This is sadly a weekly event in our agency too. We find increases on things we return 100% of for no apparent reason.
To this end, i was in contact with someone from GG regarding why my returns are around the 50% of supplied stock. I told them attempts to reduce supply infact go the complete other way. I cut down a title, i receive two other RDS titles in its place (4 years later for RDS titles)
I was told the reason the allocations are not being adjusted effectively is due to our way of doing returns. We do a big sweep at the end of the month and negate doing weekly returns. This allows more stock on the shelves and better cash flow management for us.
What i didnt understand was, how doing a weekly or a monthly return makes any difference to supplies 3-4 months down the track. Surely they still get the data regardless…. Just a cop out from Gotch. They are full of those.
don’t make any adjustment, just return them straight away, otherwise they will send you more rubbish
Michael, If you run the Tower software run the magazine sell through rates report. It provides irrefutable evidence you could use to bring the recalcitrant distributors to a forum where you can seek resolution.
Is today the last day for returns for Gordon and gotch ?
shauns, yes. gotta be in by 1pm sydney time today
I got stuck in yesterday and did a big sweep of mags and have retuned over $6k worth of mags.
Michael @1
Michael any attempt you make to get a better returns % will only be short lived anyway. Both GG and NDC routinely increase stock and reintroduce previously deleted titles. Don’t waste your time you’ll only get more frustrated.
I find the best way to manage over stocks is to take a bit of time on arrivals and immediately early return excessive stock.
I haven’t had to do your “monthly sweep” in years, and I still manage to keep my account equal to the cost of goods sold for that month and my sales growth has been better than average and my cashflow isn’t affected negatively.
If the publishers are willing to reward the addicts for their addiction why would they want to change.
I tweeted Gotch about this and, shock horror, no response.
@BillW
When you say a bit of time do you mean scanning up each individual tittle to view the sales History?
As that seems very time consuming to me.
Is there another option?
I have my POS do it, on arrival my POS alerts me if the sell through for the last 3 arrivals is under 50%, I can then immediately create an early return for some or all of the stock, the stickers are printed accordingly and the early returns are put to one side during arrivals, easy peasy.
@BrettS
In your arrivals under arrival settings is a box “Don’t confirm orders”
If you select a supplier and then click on the invoice number, a set of boxes drop in under that. Tick early returns and on each title the sales history for previous issues will come up. From here I keep the amount equal to my maximum sale over the past 4 issues, for sales under av of 5, and early return the rest. A label will print for your early return.
It’s this long tail of slow sellers that is clogging up your shelves.
I don’t early return top 50 sellers, new titles until they have a history, and part-works until a pattern is established, normally don’t keep more of than what I’ve sold after issue 5. The casual sale is not worth the hassle of that customer wanting a put-away and back-ordering earlier issues which are an admin nightmare.
So what’s actually going on here? Are publishers happy that their title is being dumped at outlets where it never sells? Seems like a great way to burn cash. Are Gordon and Gotch making accurate and honest representations to publishers on the distribution of their title?
It’s possible publishers are happy that their titles are being distributed to places where there is no chance of a sale. In this case one would question the representations publishers are making to their advertisers.
What’s going on is that publishers supply a quantity to be distributed for a fee per copy. Distributors, serving their shareholders, maximise income by distributing just about everything they receive.
How dumb are publishers then?