Playing cards, a protractor and a chinagraph pencil reinforce relevance of the newsagency

Three customers on Saturday, within a few minutes of each other, reminded me of an appreciated role the local newsagency can play.

While for sure we have transformed the business into new, non-newsagency, categories with the majority of the floor space looking nothing like a newsagency, we have maintained core newsagency lines – but in considerably less space.

The first customer asked if we had 500 playing cards. We did. They were thrilled. Price was not an issue. They commented they could probably get them from K-Mart but who wants to go looking in there, it’s so big. They loved that they were in and out in a couple of minutes.

A couple of minutes later a customer asked if we had a protractor. I took them straight to the one size we have in stock. They were not sure what a protractor was and didn’t necessarily trust the advice and the label on the pack. They sent a photo to their child and got a photo back. Satisfied, they purchased. Again, price was not an issue. Walking back down the aisle the customer threw their arm over my shoulder in a half hug. I didn’t know where to get one. Now they know about us.

And then, a couple of minutes later, a customer came in asking for something to write on glass. It was for a special celebration. In a couple of minutes we had a range of options for them to consider. It was the chinagraph pencil that they liked partly because it felt more appropriate to their need and partly because they thought they weren’t made any more.  They bought the pencil and a far more expensive white marker as a backup, just to be sure. Price was not an issue. They made a point at the end – this is what customer service is all about.

Each of these items, the playing cards, the protractor and the chinagraph pencil are all old school newsagent items. While we are known for them, they are not sufficiently high volume in traffic generation or revenue for us to rely on them for a bright future. But they can play a role in the mix – as long as we are efficient in space allocation, good with shop floor customer service and t not too far off the path of what a newsagency is.

In each examples I have shared here the biggest factors in our favour are: the shop does not look too daunting to find what you are looking for, shop floor customer service is accessible and the engagement is personal.

Our big business competitors are challenged when it comes to accessible knowledgable shop floor staff who want to engage with customers.

The difficulty for us is how do we package the customer service point of difference? You can’t say it in your ads or in a sign as it sounds meaningless, like any sales claim. The only way to promote it is through providing the best experience every time, an experience so good that customers talk about it.

Thinking back now on my experiences on Saturday, from a marketing perspective the only thing I should have tried, even though it sounds weird, is to take a photo with each of the customers. Those photos would have made good Facebook posts and that could be another way to get stories like these out there without engaging in direct advertising.

I think at the very least we should be regularly talking on Facebook and elsewhere about these low-volume yet important items for which we used to know known and that we still stock today. But we need to be quirky, interesting, in what we say. Posts like these all through the year could be valuable in rebuilding attention for these stable lines.