A week of newsagency management benchmarks: #3 revenue per square metre

Each day this week I am sharing a newsagency management benchmark which I hope you find useful. The benchmarks are not rigid, use them as a guide. I have developed them over years of working with a variety of newsagencies in many different situations.

Management benchmark #3: revenue per square metre

This is a tough benchmark to write about as it differs based on your location and your personal rent situation. For each of consideration I have come up with a range of situations and my suggested revenue per square metre per year benchmark.

But first I need to explain the measurement. In calculating revenue per square metre, revenue is all product sales only as this is a pure retail calculation. As for space, I am only interested in your retail space – not your back room and not from the top of your counter back to the wall.

Here are my suggested situational breakdowns:

1. City shopping centre: $8,500.00.
2. City high street: $5,500.00.
3. Regional/rural shopping centre: $6,750.00
4. Regional/rural high street: $4,500.00

These figures could be very different in your situation because of rent and other local factors. Use them as a broad guide only. The most important takeaway I’d like you to have from this post is to measure your number from last year, compare it to today – see how you are travelling. If you’re up, good. If you are down – fix it.

I hope this series helps newsagents look at their businesses differently and to ask questions about their performance in the context of best practice in our channel. Newsagencies with the brightest future are those where data is respected and benchmarks are set to be achieved and passed.