I am grateful for the opportunity to visit a newsagency in the Northern Territory last week that I first go to see late last year. What I saw last Wednesday was a different business. I wish I had a before photo to show. In it you would see a traditional newsagency – clean, neat but traditional, not doing anything to attract new shoppers.
This was a good newsagency but not growing, not exploring opportunities outside of magazines, newspapers, lotteries, cards and stationery. As the business is right next to a supermarket with all these items it needed to differentiate.
The business I saw Wednesday last week was different.
The best word I can use to describe what I was is: optimistic. Yes, this business looked and felt optimistic.
I am not sure the optimism I saw it is captured in this photo I took though.
The refreshed and refocused business is attracting new shoppers through ranging different, non traditional, products and displaying them in an appealing way. It is also leveraging existing traffic for greater efficiency.
The photos faces into the newsagency from the entrance. That space you see, the dance floor, is a fresh space changing every two weeks, making the business more appealing than ever and making a fresh pitch to reflect change, to combat store-blindness of regulars. The space you see provides a fresh appeal. Products are zoned, shop ability is high.
Some key changes are not seen in this photo though. The windows out of shot of the photo are pitching products that appeal to demos not usually that well served in newsagencies, demos that are shopping with the shop.
I think the biggest change is in the approach to business. This business and those in it are having a go at finding a brighter future. That is reflected in buying, displays and promotion. They are doing things now they would not have done a year ago. And each thing do, each new product they carry, each marketing pitch they make, they learn from whether it is financially successful or not.
And as I write this I think about that uniquely Aussie thing of having a go as I think it is key to the mindset and to the optimism I am seeing.
Not so much in this newsagency but in some I have seen recently, some newsagents have lost the energy to have a go. Those who do have a go and who encounter a good response, financial or not, are encouraged to have a go more and more and this is what ultimately results in valuable change and an optimistic outlook.