Picking up on my post yesterday about what Coles is doing with Hallmark in its supermarkets, I write today to call on newsagents to exert more control themselves over the card departments in their own businesses.
It is unfortunate card companies for decades have taught newsagents to rely on them for management of many aspects of the card department from fixtures to layout to visual merchandising to even secondary card locations in-store. I think this strategy was all about grabbing and retaining real-estate in retail newsagencies. Newsagents, short on capital, often agreed.
What we require today is different because retail has changed, online and offline. You can see card companies changing to suit, but not enough in our channel.
Our shops are our shops. Responsibility ultimately lies with us. Too often newsagents point to a card company if sales are down and while they share the responsibility, they alone are not responsible.
We choose our suppliers, the location of cards, the total space allocated, how they are managed in-store, how employees interact with cards an more.
We are responsible.
It is up to us to manage card company relationships to best serve the needs of our businesses. We are better served to do this if we don’t owe them any money for capital works or investment.
At the heart of our decisions needs to be facts … as in business data, our business data, sell through data. This data should come from our systems and not from the card companies.
Dealing with facts can be difficult as the facts may contradict the personal relationships built up over many years in our businesses. This is where it can get tough. But you must not allow personal relationships to get in the way of facts.
For their part, card companies need to engage more actively with the newsagency channel as we offer them the best opportunity for commercially valuable growth in this marketplace.
If only there were enough people in the card companies with small business retail experience to see this.
I absolutely agree. Taking control means understanding the card sales and outing the laggards. But identifying the underperforming cards and card ranges is not straight forward.
I spent much time analysing Tower reports, the sales report for suppliers with last order date was very useful. But it did not identify pockets/cards that had not sold at all in my analysis period. I found myself cross checking with stock reports to identify cards that had never sold. Shockingly, there were many.
What I really needed was one by item report that puts units of sales into time buckets and also identifies the last purchase date & quantity. And not just for sale items, but also for items that never sold in the period. That way I could identify trends as well as individual performers.
The card companies tell me they can monitor my sales, hogwash. They monitor their sales and have no idea if their sold cards sit in my pockets unsold.
Colin, ask for a pocket turn report.
We use Henderson Greetings and they provide pocket turn reports for a 12month rolling period indicating how many times the pocket has been ordered. It shows the date of the last order for each pocket too. I generally request a new report every 3 or 4 months.
I assume other companies would do the same report.
Amanda,
True and a useful tool.
A pocket return report only works if all pockets ie suppliers are part of a grid. Some of my suppliers are not so sophisticated. My major supplier is able to generate this report and has done so. I found the report overstates sales and does not cover pockets the supplier considers “open” where the rep selects cards.
Anyway, it does not tell me about sales, it tells me about purchases. I need to know what sells and when.
In the Tower software is a category performance report developed some years ago with Hallmark in the US. This provides sell through data as do several other reports. Sell through is all that matters to a retailer.
I urge newsagents to make themselves aware of performance reporting options they have in their business.
Also, as noted, be responsible for cards – manage them, promote them, chase sales. Having the stock on the shelves is not enough.
I have recently dropped Henderson in favour of another supplier who has individual bar codes for each design. Henderson only had about 20 for their entire range, making me totally reliant on them for pocket turn reports. Sure, my POS could tell me how much SOH I had and how much I was selling, but I could not get it to categories. For example, I wanted to see if an increase in (say) wedding cards corresponded with an increase in wedding gifts.
Now I will be able to do my own reports when I need them, not when Henderson are prepared to give them to me.
This is not the sole reason I changed suppliers, of course. There were other reasons, such as range, design style, responsiveness to requests and a willingness to help grow my card sales.
Henderson? Are they still in the game?
Thats a bit of a head in the sand comment Allan!
A good retailer should always be looking at what other suppliers are doing whether that be in the card category or any other category. And like Mark’s post suggests, any retailer should be working hard with that company to grow sales together.
Your analogy would be the same as an ignorant non-newsxpress member stating is newsxpress still in the game?
Amanda it frustrates me you make a newsXpress comment. This post is not about newsXpress nor is this blog. Indeed, my blogging here predates my involvement with newsXpress. There are many analogies that could support your point to Allan.
Amanda, I`m very sorry if my comment has upset you, what can I say…I don`t like Hendersons.
I had Henderson cards years ago and was very happy with them. Their range and service was excellent. But when I made the decision to leave they were not happy. I`m a great believer in not burning bridges but they poured petrol on the bridge and dropped a match on it. When you leave a job you should thank the employer for the opportunity they gave you. When you leave a supplier they should thank you for past business.
I wrestled with the decision to change for quite some time and it was a decision not made lightly. But at the end of the day I needed to grow my business and grow it has. Hendersons tried to convince me that I could do this without the help of a marketing group, they were wrong. I can fully understand that a supplier does not want to lose accounts or market share but it is what it is. A decision I dont ever regret and I owe newsXpress a lot of credit for my growth.
I can understand your newsXpress comment Amanda as you obviously know about my connection with this group and thats probably all you had to go by.
As for retailers looking at what other suppliers are doing I dont think I will spend my time looking at Henderson cards, gifts, homewares etc etc yes, but not Hendersons.
Amanda, those that know me know that I wear my heart on my sleeve and stand by my comments, thats why I use my full name here. Sometimes it gets me into some strife but I wear it. I will always stand by what I say and if that causes some grief then so be it. What you might see as “head in the sand” stuff I see as still being upset over dealings that went bad, very bad. Do I hold a grudge? Maybe, but as I said, how people deal with losing an account or resigning from a job can go along way to helping what might be in the future.
As my Mum always says….”be nice to the little people on your way up….chances are you might meet them on the way down”.
Cheers and happy retailing.
Al
I saw nothing wrong with Amanda’s comment.
Any others off limit ?
Hendersons shat on us a few years. They made a promise that we would be their sole outlet in the area when they wanted our business and went back on that promise when it suited them. We dumped them after that and would never consider them again as a supplier. Bridge burnt by them.