The early return of magazines is vital to the management of space, cash-flow and labour in the newsagency. My advice is that you not wait for a magazine to reach its recall date for it to be returned. Returning a magazine before the recall data is an early return or a supplementary return.
While not liked by magazine publishers, early returns are the only reasonable mechanism newsagents currently have for managing magazines in the newsagency over which they have control.
My advice is newsagents need a process to ensure early returns are done with consistency.
For early returns to work for you and for you to not deny your business magazine sales you could otherwise achieve, here is our best-practice early returns advice:
- Early return from your shelves.
- Early return at a time in the month designated for the process and not as titles come in.
- The early returns process needs to be completely separate to magazine arrivals into the business.
- Check for early return opportunities at least monthly, toward the end of the third week of the month.
- Do your early returns as a separate process to regular returns or putting new magazine titles out.
- Do not early return magazines the day they arrive. The only exception would be if you have been sent a magazine very late in the month and you are absolutely certain it will not sell.
- In my opinion, magazines should not be on your shelves for more than four weeks, unless they are continuing to sell well.
- Look out for the Magbook titles as they are expensive and usually sell in low volumes. We suggest early returning within the month of supply if they are not selling.
- Look out for the Beginners Guide titles as they are expensive and usually sell in low volumes. We suggest early returning within the month of supply if they are not selling.
- Look out for the Express titles as they are expensive and usually sell in low volumes. We suggest early returning within the month of supply if they are not selling.
- Look out for the AWW cookbooks as they have long on-sale periods and unless you are selling reasonable quantities each month you will not be covering the space cost.
- Check each title before you early return. For example, if you received 10 of a monthly and three weeks in you have sold two, you could early return four copies.
- Do not early return before week three of the month unless you have severe space issues. Giving titles time to sell could help you achieve more revenue.
- Ignore delayed billing in your early returns assessments.
- Treat early returning as a management issue. Whoever does it needs to be thoughtful in their approach and engaged so as to not deny certain magazine sales.
- If you find yourself regularly early returning a title, ask for fewer copies.
If you do early return leaving less stock that you would usually sell and then sell out – I think the distributor ought deny any request for extra stock.
Is it just me or has supply improved considerably since network closed? I find I only have a small Supp Return at the end of each month the bulk of which are late returns of mags held over at the end of the previous month.
Steve I think it has improved considerably. However, with sales as they are, managing space is more important than ever.
Mark I completely understand the pressures of receiving a decent return on costly floor space most retailers are under but owning my own building in a regional area I can operate differently. While everyone else is reducing titles I’ve actually increased them, thats resulted in new customers coming to me because I carry the titles their local newsagent doesn’t. Now as the supply is reducing my mag department size seems to by equal to my supply. If supply drops further I’ll have to reduce my pockets to suit and that wont worry me one bit.
The result of this (I refer to it as walking in one direction while everyone else is running in the other) is I increased magazine sales substantially in the first 3 years of ownnig this business and held steady in dollar terms for the last 2.
Steve it is a matter of running magazines appropriate to your situation. Regional and rural businesses are best placed to cost effectively maintain a good range.
Mark the thing I’ve noticed is a lot of regional newsagents have drunk the Kool Aid and substantially reduced their range because they believe they must. Thats fine if you replace it with new products that sells but in a lot these small newsagencies its just looks empty. If you have the space I can’t work out why you would top and return titles instead of giving them a go.
Steve,
The concern is that some newsagents are under such cashflow pressure that early returning is maximised even where there is no alternative to display. It’s not just a regional issue, I see this within Adelaide also.