The decision to remain a member of a newsagency association ought to be a business decision based on tangible benefits.
How much does it cost for a year? What tangible benefits have you achieved in the last year? What other use could you make of such an investment?
Talking with a newsagent recently, they cited access to award rates as the main benefit for their considerable cost a year. In less than a minute I showed them online access to a free service via Fairwork.
The ANF on their website (see image) lists annual membership at $876.00 per year. Think about what you could do with that $876. The new product range you could bring in, the ads you could run, the changes you could find in the business, the manager you could pay while you have a week off.
I can think of plenty of products categories you could introduce for this spend, categories off of which you can expect to make between $3,000 and $5,000 in GP a year.
Note: this discussion is about any association in any retail channel. The numbers and needs are the same.
Each of these benefits would be, I suspect, more practically useful to the business than what the ANF provides.
Associations need to justify the fees they charge. It is not enough to say support us and we support you as on the representation front they do a mediocre job at best in my view.
I estimate newsagents pour around $2,500,000 a year into their associations nationally. I doubt newsagents see a return equal to this flowing to their businesses.
Think about that. Can you identify $2.5M in value to the newsagency channel from any of all of the newsagent associations in the last year?
Now, think about what else that $2.5M could have been spent on your behalf.
I would love to see this debated publicly in front of newsagents with representatives from newsagent associations. Not to tear them down but to flesh out if they are delivering value. It could be I am wrong. If I am the associations ought to make the point and show it, they ought to show genuine bottom line value to newsagent members.
With the commercial future of newsagency businesses further removed from what the associations are interested in, I see little value in them.
all the associations as well as buying groups are not all things to all people. NANA saved me over $300 each month on Electricity. My monthly bill was usually $900 plus, it is now around $500.
they also assisted me when Network folded and I had a large Gotch bill that I could not meet.
The associations are there to negotiate (on behalf of members) financially better trading terms with our major industry partners Tatts, News Corp, Fairfax, G&G.
There has been NO financial benefit received by members from these companies in over 20years. In fact it is the opposite : actions and agreements made with these companies have been inadequate and detrimental to the businesses of its members.
Unfortunately there is no transparency from associations or buying / marketing groups to be honest.
NANA collects $350k a year from newsagents and $370k a year from suppliers. So who is NANA really representing.
All associations should be transparent in disclosing which companies they have a commercial relationship with, and what the details of those relationships are.
Then newsagents can make their own decisions based on factual information with the knowledge their association may be steering them towards a certain supplier because that association will receive a financial benefit in return from the supplier.
I suspect the people who benefit the most from the associations are those employed by them.
Having been a past employee of an association, I can tell you it is ALL about ego, $$$$ and title.
Lynn I agree. While I was on the ANF board for only one year before resigning it is what I saw. Selfish by board members and some staff – to the detriment of newsagents.