I was in Germany for four days last week on business and got to see a range of newsagency and related businesses. I saw two types of businesses: small, almost kiosk like in size, shops with around 50 magazine titles and convenience lines; and, large format stores in high traffic locations like railway stations and shopping malls or precincts.
Based on what I saw, Germans love their magazines and newspapers.
The photo below is from the entrance to a shop in Munich. I saw this same type of entrance in several shops. I like that it is open, easy to see around the whole shop.
Here is the entrance to another shop. The same approach: a low profile display unit for volume titles in the entrance.
Here is the entrance to another magazine shop in Munich.
Here is the extraordinary range in the kids magazine section in a magazine shop in Nuremberg railway station:
TV and related titles:
Weeklies from a Munich store.
Crossword titles from a Munich store.
Newspapers in a the business in the Nuremberg railway station.
Looking a plenty of retail in Germany, magazines are not as readily available in Germany as in Australia but most of the shops that do sell them have an extraordinary range of titles. The bigger shops have more than double the magazine range we have. This stands to reason with the German population more than three times that of Australia.
I do wonder if the size of the range of magazines in the bigger stores is a function of there being fewer such stores.
I picked up plenty over the course of the week, not only in relation to magazines but in other product categories important to us.
It is strange that they are low level as one of the complaints about newsagents in Australia is the fact that customers have to bend over to look at the more popular higher selling titles. Apart from that, I love seeing a well presented Newsagency.
Chris I had the same thought about the height. Maybe it has to do with Germans being a practical bunch, focussed on getting on this things rather than complaining.
I wonder what model the newsagents are working on. Do they pay up front? What is their sell through rate and so on? This is not intended to be a grumble: we could learn a lot from other models.
Henry in most situations I have seen overseas it is sale or return with accounts paid in roughly the same time period as us. The biggest difference I have seen is the level of control over supply. I thin 2016 will see some changes for us in this regard.