The most basic task magazine distributor Gordon and Gotch has serving newsagents and publishers is to accurately and ethically supply magazines based on sales data. I regularly receive evidence from newsagents of the company’s people or systems or both failing to do this.
The image shows the worsening situation regarding People’s Friend for one newsagency.
The graduation of supply suggests that the problem here is systemic rather than human error.
It looks to me like Gotch has stock it has to move, regardless of sales. I would love to be wrong but the evidence suggests I am not. There is no reason for the ramping up of supply as Gotch has done.
This action disadvantages newsagents. It makes them less competitive. It is unfair. Yet here we are in July 2017 with a post about an issue that I was writing about here back in 2005 when I started this blog.
Magazine publishers, we need your help.
It is action like this that causes newsagents to cut space for magazines, thereby forcing Gotch to cut the range of titles carried. I have written about newsagents doing this, and why, yet no one appears interested enough to fix the most fundamental problem: the continuing systematic oversupply by Gotch.
What happens here is that each oversupply has a cost to newsagents of labour, space and freight. All of these costs are borne from an acton over which the newsagent has absolutely no control.
There are not many businesses where poor (or deliberately harmful) supplier practices lead to significant loss making activity for the recipient business.
The newsagent who sent me this screen shot has good data, reliable data, provided on time. The actions of Gotch have nothing to do with recent returns notification changes. No, the actions here go to the core of magazine distribution, they reflect decades-long problems that are a blight on the newsagency channel, but not supermarkets it would appear.
That magazine publishers remain silent on this issue is appalling as their interests and newsagent interests are aligned. Only over the counter sales matter. Everything else is overhead to be kept as low as possible.