Today at the newsagency we have received more than double the usual Thursday volume of magazines. The storage units are overflowing. We are not alone. Every newsagent in Australia would be experiencing this.
While an increase in range and individual title size is common this time of the year, on the back of the extraordinary overload of unrequested adult colouring titles and other new releases, there is no room at the (newsagency) inn and most of us do not have a barn to house the extra stock.
No one is managing the newsagency channel. Whereas supermarkets are supplied to a specific number of pockets, Gotch and Network pay little attention to this in our channel. They supply expecting our magazine department to be able to contract and expand based on what they decide to send us.
With many newsagents reducing magazine floorspace allocation, the flexibility for handling more or less titles is gone. There is no room for days like today where we receive double what is usual for a Thursday. If there is no store room, the only option is to early return existing titles to make space. Some newsagents will early return some of today’s titles for this reason.
This is a frustrating and avoidable situation.
Magazine publishers and distributors ought to be discussing this issue of retail space allocation as it sits at the heart of the anger newsagents feel around magazine supply issues.
Got to work this morning to find BHG with a pack of cards, envelopes and gift tags. Quick calculations show we make $160 on the 90 BHG received, which we would sell anyway, AND A LOSS OF $400 on the cards we would have sold at top GP. These dickheads trying to undermine our businesses Hopefully will get what they deserve, extinction.
I never see a decline in card sales as a result of free cards with magazines. On BHG, sales of the Christmas issue are excellent year in year out. Sure it is bulky but they have provided a floor display unit for this.
In the big scheme of Xmas it would be impossible to quantify the loss of sales, but these people are idiots or are deliberately trying to take sales from us in our own shops selling their product!
Peter they are doing what they need to do for their business. I think it is a smart move for them. I know the folks at pacific well and I do not think they set out to deliberately harm us.
Mark, if we are talking about whats best for our businesses(all newsagencies) then we must NOT put them on the shelf.
Business is business and we are not here to lose profit.
Peter with BHG you will make profit. For sure. With some other lower volume titles I agree. Why you would try and kill one of Australia’s top selling magazines and one of the few that is profitable for our channel is beyond me.
The magazine sells itself, they don’t have to take business from us to sell it.
Just noticed home beautiful has boxed cards too. Next year will all magazines have them, we will then not have to order from Hallmark, Simson etc.
Publishers need to realize that Newsagents are reducing floor space in their magazine department for one reason PROFITABILITY.
If they want to have a viable channel to sell special interest magazines they better get that into their heads real quick.
We need more commission and we need publishers and distributors to be smarter with scale out ,get rid of that trucking company mentality.
What amazes me is they see the decline in sales and the decline in floor space we give them yet they do nothing about it.
Yes we have the MPA trial ,the guide lines for that did not address the low margin issue .The input provided by the ANF showed they are unable to think outside the square and still have one foot firmly planted in the past
Annette Syms cook books.
I already had the following;
No 1 -4
No 2 -2
No 3 -2
No 4 -4
No 5 -5
No 6 -5
No 7 -9
This morning I received 1 more copy of No`s 1,3,4, and 5 and 2 copies of No2 and an amazing 4 copies more of No 7.
I have had it with this publication, the whole lot is coming off the shelves today.
Same here Allan, back they go.
We got a whole pallet of BHG , yes a pallet ! 266 of them. Plus a heap of Symply Cook books.
I’ve early returned fully two thirds of what arrived in my magazine delivery this morning. If you’re a magazine publisher and you’re reading this then there’s every chance that if Network or Gotch sent me either a new title of yours this morning that I hadn’t requested or oversupplied titles that I do sell (one example being a mag that I regularly sell a single copy of that they decided to send seven of instead of the usual two) then it has been topped regardless of whether it was full or not and put in the returns bin never having made it to the shelf.
Thankfully we didn’t recieve any more Symply Cookbooks as I pulled all of those off the shelf last time they oversupplied by sending us more when we hadn’t sold the ones we had previously been sent.
I have pulled off more old stock than usual to make way for today’s stock plus magazine colouring titles. However, I have not early returned BHG as I am confident the package with the cards will sell out.
On the Symply titles – I no longer stock these as they are not profitable.
20% increase in supply of BHG but no cards with any of them.It must only be for the city retailers eh?
Ken for all nexus newsagents because they already had a bin to hold stock.
8 years a newsagent and for 8 years the major gripe is magazines.
The margin is too small for 2015.
The stock is not in my control.
Terms of supply are unacceptable.
Return systems are based on 1950 models.
All the representatives we have, all the fees we pay and we have gone nowhere.
If even 10% of newsagents paid $500 a year into a fund we could hire an individual on a 12 month contract to represent us. Get ACCC approval and ignore the ANFs of this world and get a result.
We need a result and we need it soon or the alternative is we say goodbye to mags altogether. They occupy space and return too little for us to pay rents and wages. They chew up costs in managing them, returning them, topping them.
Its time, don’t we think?
We need a radical change, root and branch, maybe large margin, firm sale, full stock control – something, anything is better than this, its wasteful, unsustainable and low profit for all concerned.
Don’t know what I’ve done right, but if you ignore the bulk BHG’s today’s probably the lightest Thursday for mags I’ve had for weeks. Especially Gordon & Gotch (Networks always stupidly oversupplied).
Publishers and Distributors treat us like monkeys ,they pay us peanuts !!
Steve,lucky no one knows where you are from , otherwise they will probably revise your allocations , you may be understock for them Lol
Crazy day today only finished marking mags at 5pm, but not because of oversupply of magazines, because of $70 million powerball jackpot which thank god went off tonight!
Yes lots of BHG but think they’ll sell well, previous issue still selling, split delivery would be good for these bulky issues as we have absolutely no storage and they don’t stack well.
Lucky not to receive Symply series but why so many more colouring books? These are becoming like the annual dump of calendars that we just top and return.
Publishers please NO more colouring titles, we are over them!
Understanding the stock limitations of most Newsagents, I reduced my print run earlier this year to a realistic level to avoid my titles ‘being left out the back as there is no room on the shelves’, and have also reduced the on sale period to a period most agents seem happy to keep titles on the shelves for.
What else as a publisher could I do to help?
Dave Brazier congratulations for leading the way, well done.
It’s now up to distributors to do their job properly and send the right amounts to the right outlets.