The ACCC has witten to interested parties advising the decision to approve the MPA application for authorisation to conduct a pilot program. Click here for the Determination by the ACCC.
The ACCC decision is despite:
The majority of post-draft determination submissions were received from newsagents opposing authorisation of the pilot.
The role of the ANF is documented in the determination including at point 21 (page 5) their strong support for the MPA application and then at point 27:
27. The ANF provided a submission maintaining its support for the pilot and responding to issues raised by newsagents. Another from a provider of point of sale software opposed the arrangements.
The ACCC in the determination makes a number of comments I may comment on here at a later time as I disagree with their thinking.
The reality is – the result is what it is. We all move on. I remain committed to pursuing fair and equitable magazine supply for newsagents.
Mark, one aspect of the ACCC I’m grappling with is.
So if magazine price increases as a consequence of distribution model changes (arising from this ACCC approved trial) are highly unlikely in the ACCC’s eyes, then where do the distributors get the money to make up for losses arising as a consequence of reduced magazine supply.
I guess another way of looking at it is, in the future, under a reduced supply model, where do the Publishers get the funds from to pay the distributors what they used to get when it was open slather on numbers.
Not from reducing the spend on catering to the supermarkets I would think.
Is more efficient logistics the answer?
Perhaps the supply numbers will not change.
Someone is driving the boat with the course all plotted out and it never was Newsagents nor the ACCC it seems.
Ah well, decisions been made. Interesting times ahead.
Newslink, supermarkets, service stations, 7/ll’s etc all dictate (because they have national representation) and ergo make national decisions on their magazine planograms.
That is something that will never happen to newsagents because we are the niche magazine suppliers.
Having said that I do not believe that newsagents are so ignorant of their demographic that they don’t know what will or will not sell in their businesses.
I am very interested in seeing the results of this authorization with some of the newsagents undergoing category management training and some not.
This week I went into 4 newsagencies in new malls in Adelaide. Two agencies in one mall (30 metres apart) had a very poor selection of mags (probably supplied by a distribution agent because of the lack of qualification for direct supply).
One owner had a large pile of $1 mags thrown on the table and it looked like a secondhand junk shop – he would be a person who needed some magazine training.
Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of those types of agencies and they don’t help us with engagement with the distributors about our supplies.
However, time will tell and we will wait with interest the outcome of this trial.
I firmly believe that the only way for us to stay afloat is to early return and any stoppage of this will result in the demise of many newsagents.
Surely the MPA understands this issue but they also know that we are their cashcow and that is not going to change any time soon.
INTERESTING TIMES
If nothing else it gives newsagents the chance to have 12 months to look at whether they can exit the magazine space completely should it all go south with the trial and any resulting changes after the trial. We all know the MPA will get the result they want out of the trial now that it’s going ahead as they can manipulate the supply to give them the data they want the ACCC to see.
If as people are alluding that the trial simply brings in better conditions for the MPA dsitributors then hopefully people will remember that it was the ANF that agreed with the trial .
If all goes well and there is a genuinely better outcome then we can all smile and get on with the business of making money. 🙂