We are promoting the official Star Wars cards and gifts range from Hallmark on the lease line, facing into the mall – leveraging maximum traffic generating potential for the newsagency.
We are also promoting on social media widely around the business – and not only to those who like our social media pages.
Star Wars is tipped by licence experts here in Australia and overseas to generate more sales from now to Christmas than all other licenced products combined.
Early engagement with other Star Wars products that we launched two weeks ago suggests that interest will be massive. We have customers who have prepaid us for official Star wars licenced products that will not arrive for at least another month.
Good licences promoted well in-store and outside the business can be valuable for us not only for the direct sales they generate but also for the other purchases made by those attracted by the licenced product promotion.
I urge all newsagents to embrace licenced product opportunities from a variety of suppliers. Good licences allow you to make a pitch for relevance related to the licence and this is often better than the relevance attached to your shingle.
Be careful about your licence choices as some are duds. Not all licences go as nuts as Star Wars will or Frozen did.
The challenge with licence engagement is the need to engage early. Usually, this is months away from release. In the case of Star Wars, we completed most of our buying by March – we actually started last last year. yes, considerable forward planning is involved.
While being part of an engaged group helps, it is not mandatory. Do your research, watch what is happening in the marketplace, listen to suppliers, be connected with overseas news sources. Know about major opportunities well in advance of them hitting mainstream news here.
Yes, all this is hard work. However, this is where new traffic lives, where our future lives. It is good and rewarding work.