I have emailed newsagent ts this morning with an invitation to participate in he Q2 newsagency sales benchmark study:
I am preparing a fresh benchmark study for the newsagency channel to look at the latest sales trends overall and in key product categories for the second quarter of 2017. This quarterly newsagency sales performance study will help newsagents see the future based on the data trends. Click here for my last report.
How to participate.
- Please run a Monthly Sales Comparison Report for 01/04/2017 – 30/06/2017 compared to 01/04/2016 – 30/06/2016.
- Tick the category box. IMPORTANT.
- Tick to exclude home delivery and sub agent data.
- DO NOT tick the supplier box.
- Preview the report on the screen. Save as a PDF and email this to me at mark@towersystems.com.au.
- Read the report yourself and see what it shows you about your business.
Something off topic. The benchmark of 3 months provides excellent viewpoint of industry and grand strategy.
The problem for individual newsagents is the lack of business intelligence tools and retail analytic skills for weekly and bi-monthly analysis of store performance.
Firstly, the weight of each day of the week, weather, jackpot, school and public holidays has not been considered in performance comparison. It may not be an issue for 3 month period, but it is major issue for 7 to 30 days period and effects the judgement of store owners for immediately actions.
Secondly, some of our suppliers has better business intelligence of our shops than ourselves. Some reps from national brands show me the performance of their products by SKU, by SubCategory and by Category from their supply data, in a few clicks in their apple/android apps. On the other hand, each newsagent shop owner is on isolated information islands, and data entry, collection, and analysis is beyond the capacity of most owners. Our giant competitors, their has in-house retail analytic team do the job daily. The national reps has better tools so that they can cope with the shop managers of retail giants.
Lastly, without insight of the recent change in short periods, newsagents has difficulties to rapidly adjust their operations.
Thanks again Mark for providing the benchmark analysis for years.
Sunny I think many suppliers do not have the quality ad scope of data you think.
The best thing newsagents can do is ensure their data is accurate and, then, to use the data.
You are right. Mark. Most suppliers don’t have the quality and scope of data for various reasons, (1) We might buy same stock from various suppliers, including manufacturer, preferred distributors and alternative distributors, (2) We might have alternative products for the same category. (3) Suppliers only have supply data but not the sale data.
Therefore, each supplier has only part of puzzle of our shop performance. They have difficulties in forecasting our demand from our purchasing history.
Many years ago, a major supplier to an national chain told us that every store dedicate to order stock within one category to only one supplier. The owners of the chain stores knows that they can get better deals sometimes from other alternative suppliers, but they forced to order from one supplier and that is good for both shops and suppliers in long team. He was right.
For example, Supplier A visited us and show us the latest new products. Can we make immediately judgement on whether to trail these products?
We may have our personal knowledge on this category and might take action based on that.
Supplier may has sale-or-return policy so we might take action based on that.
Our friends in other shops may had trailed 2 weeks ago, so we might take action based on that.
Will any of us look through our POS reports of the sales performance VS stock level of this category in last month to take action?
If shop is run by an staff, and he/she does not have the personal knowledge, business connection, and favorite supplier policy to assist his judgement. He/she mostly will say no and pass the ball to the owners.
If we cannot make a rapid decision based on sale performance, and delayed or no decision may cost us gold opportunities.
The real problem is that after we took the new products, but found there are overstock in the category related to sales, or suddenly slow down in sales.