This rough sketch by me represents a traditional Newsagency layout. It is close to what shopfitters designed for newsagents, encouraged by Tatts, newspaper publishers and magazine, card and stationery companies.
Everyone wanted their space. And they got it. Little regard was paid to what was right for the business, for its future. Little was known.
No one invested time in understanding the whole business. Newsagents too often did not think about the bigger picture because, too often, they were not retailers.
So, newsagents ended up with a zoned business that was inflexible and at its heart, selfish for the suppliers.
Sadly, there are Newsagency businesses with layouts like or close to this today.
The bold colours on the drawing represents floor traffic for the key traffic driving product categories. I know from years of basket analysis that lottery, weekly magazine and newspaper customers rarely purchase any other product.
Take newspapers, around 75% of newspaper purchases in newsagencies do not include any other product category. For lotteries that number is close to 80%. For weekly magazines, on the day of issue, the number is 65%.
The shop layout encourages inefficiency in these products. Lotteries are the worst, demanding front of store location and barring other products from their location.
Look at the red, blue and yellow trails of traffic. This is what I see in traditional newsagency businesses. The lines represent inefficiency. The show a business not leveraging traffic th way it should.
In this drawing you can see a core reason news agencies are closing in Australia right now. They have not been built to cope with change. Shame on everyone, involved. Shame o,n those continuing to build businesses like this today.
Back in 2009 I designed a plug and play newsagency, one where it could be relayed without a shopfitter, changed dramatically, evolved to serve evolving needs. The flexibility in the core structure of the business has helped it go thorough tremendous changes.
That was in 2009. I know of people who visited that shop and said it was too radical, went on to build an old school business and got out losing money years later.
For years, through this blog and through the work I do with newsXpress, I have been speaking about the need for change to commence on the shop floor. I am pleased to see that happening. But it is not happening in enough businesses.
Newsagents have to push back hard on any supplier who demands space allocated to their category and it alone. They have to push back on suppliers who demand front of store. These pressures need to have a commercial reason, something you can bank on. A simple demand is no longer enough. We are better than this.
My advice to newsagents is to look at your foot traffic. Fast forward through camera footage. See your hot spots and see how you are not leveraging traffic to its fullest potential.
You want to work on this before it is too late.
If you have an old school Newsagency like in my sketch, change, now, quickly, the radically.
Structure your newsagency business to change the three key traffic flows, to get the deeper into the business and more integrated with the whole of the business rather than selfishly staying in the destination category.
The Newsagency of the future starts on the shop floor.
>It is close to what shoplifters designed for newsagents
Damn you autocorrect!
Thanks. Fixed.
I attended the meeting with Barnet, lotterywest and what I thought was anf, who no longer represent the ideals of supporting the newsagent. I will be stopping my anf subscription. Further to the newsagency I whole heartedly agree with you regarding the retail layout, take note of the post office layouts, the post office counter is at the back of the store hence all the traffic moves through almost every isle to maximise product exposure. But I have been waiting to use this word, until Lotterywest starts to listen to the people on the front lines nothing will happen. and since we have no say as to where we think the lotto counter should be located our store will suffer.
If you take a look at a Woolworths Petrol sight, the counter is at the back of the store, so you must walk past everything before you reach the counter.
Oh and the Tatts Lotto counter is at the back with the other counter….funny that!!!
Woolworths know retail. They spend millions of dollars on research into these types of things… and where to position a lotto counter.
Tatts have no retail experience.
Thanks Mark for providing analysis on shop layout. The stock sold along rates you quoted are much higher than those from our shop’s.
Sold-Along Rate Mark’s Ours
Lotto 80% 57%
Paper 75% 50%
Weekly 65% 26%
For example, sold with Weekly magazine,
25% with paper, 14% with confectionery, 13% with lotto, 9% with stationery, 7% with Water, 7% with Cig, 5% with Giftware & Toys, 3% with Card & Wrapping, 3% with bus tickets, 3% with Instant Scratch-its, 2% with drinks 1% with Telecom & IT products.
Note the rates I quoted are from newsagency benchmark studies of between 160 and 250 newsagencies.
Mark,
Presumably your numbers are for newsXpress stores. Maybe not representative of all newsagencies.
No, Colin. It’s dangerous to presume. As I often say here, the data to which I refer comes from a broad and balanced cross-section of the channel. Remember, Tower Systems serves 1,750 newsagencies. newsxpress has 232 members and around 80% of those are Tower customers – roughly 10% of the Tower newsagency community. This post of mine has nothing to do with newsXpress.
With statistics, transparency is everything. I have a big distrust of data where source is unclear or unrepresentative.
I am very reassured that the statistical insights you share with us are supported by the big data of Tower. Knowing that puts the numbers in context for me and makes them much more valuable. Thanks for sharing.
Does anyone have or know of a Tatts agency with two public entrances (streetside & inside shopping centre) and how the counter is set up. Foot traffic would average out to equal and same for image exposure at both entrances. I’m wondering if anyone has a centrally located counter.
Colin this information has been in all the benchmark reports I have done for each quarter of the last 12+ or so years. I’ve always been transparent about it.
Also, I’d not use the term big data as that is a marketing term used too often by corporates who don’t know what it means.
Mark I hear what youre saying , but how do we push back.
The newsagency channel as I see it ,with my modest amount of years in it,has had a history of being used as the doormat for these suppliers.
Whereas I dont think newspapers or magazines hold much or any sway over us anymore ,Tatts have taken it to a whole new level.