The delay announced by Tatts just before Christmas to their enforcing the corporate image and DigiPOS changes are an opportunity for newsagents to consider the required capital investment and challenge claims made by Tatts.
My understanding is that Tatts is justifying the capex on the basis of expected growth. If my business was a Tatts outlet I’d want evidence before I spent $25K – $40K on these changes.
The extra time right now gives newsagents opportunity to leverage local authorities and federal authorities to have them look at what must be a channel wide capex of more than $60M by some of the smallest retail businesses in Australia. It will take $1B in tatts ticket sales just to recoup the capex.
I hope people are running the numbers and looking for avenues through which to have the claims reviewed and the costs reconsidered.
Any challenge to the demands from Tatts are best placed by individual newsagents through their state based bodies such as Small Business Commissioners, VCAT, QCAT and the like. Making such complaints is straight forward. These are a good place to start.
The challenge is newsagents will complain about the requirements but usually not act on them. This is where people in the channel let themselves down. Too often they expect someone else to make their case for them.
This delay is an opportunity of time newsagents should use.
If everything checks out then all is good.