Counter confectionery is ready for a shake up. With c-stores, petrol outlets, supermarkets and newsagents all offering the same brands, I think there is an opportunity for a point of difference. I have looked at many different offers recently in a range of retailers from different suppliers. This photo is one example. I like that almost all the products on offer are mints. Indeed, I suspect inside each tin is exactly the same mints. But the product is not the mints, it is the tin. The tin enables shoppers to purchase the mints as gifts – and that is what I like here – turning the counter based confectionery purchase into a gift purchase … and an impulse gift purchase at that.
When I have written here about disruption, this is what I mean. Changing the offer, changing the newsagency story, disrupting what you deliver as opposed to what people expect, getting people to thin about your business differently.
We can do this. we can change what the newsagency is, what our newsagency is and we can do it in a way that is appropriate to the needs of our customers.
The mints are one small example. The opportunities for challenging expectations exist right through our businesses.
The other reason to love these mints is that you will not see them supermarkets, c-stores and petrol outlets. we have to do more to pull our businesses away from these channels that have taken a percentage of newsagency shoppers over the years. We separate ourselves from them through the products we stock. I think starting this at the counter is a good move.
I pulled out of traditional candy at the counter of my newsagency two years ago. I’m happy with the result in the context of impulse purchases, margin and differentiation.
While a tin of mints will not define a newsagency business, it is another brick in the wall of change and change is essential in my view. We need to embrace every opportunity to change shopper perception and there is no better place to make such a move for change than at the sales counter.