This photo shows one week of magazine returns from one newsagency. None of the magazines has been topped – so the boxes contain full magazines which have failed to sell in time and others being returned early because considerably more stock was supplied than had ever been sold in this newsagency.
What a waste of paper, fuel, time and space.
The time spent on managing and processing this excess stock is a financial and time management burden on newsagents, it holds this business and thousands of newsagents back.
No trial is needed to understand this problem. Magazine distributors and magazine publishers have all the data they need to provide newsagents with fair and equitable supply. That they do not use this data is an environmental and financial scandal.
How can this sort of business model continue? Who does this serve? Not withstanding the incremental cost per title/magazine is minimal – in aggregate it must be costing distributors significant $. It is hard to imagine the commercial drivers for this?
Matt it continues because newsagents affected will not take on the distributors in a legal forum of authority.