Regardless of the spin from newspaper publishers, we are approaching the day when capital city and major regional daily newspapers will cease to be published daily.
As the largest single channel retailing print newspapers in Australia, small business newsagents need to be prepared for this, we need to ensure, today, that our businesses can sustain such a move.
This will happen. Daily newspapers will close. The decline in sales is driving it. The decline in advertising revenue makes it unavoidable.
The print model for news has run its race. The costs of printing the product and distributing it to shops and homes is too high.
I appreciate plenty in the newsagency channel will disagree with me or will hope I am wrong. The thing is, there is now downside in business planning on the basis of me being right. This business planning would / should focus on making the business attractive for people who do not visit today and on how to attract those people to the business.
New business and new traffic are key to success in 2018 as fewer people will walk through your front door for traditional newsagency products. So, we need non traditional newsagency products, promoted outside the business, to attract new shoppers.
Acting now, hopefully, long before now, gives you the best opportunity for successful trading through what I think will be a very disruptive couple of years, far more disruptive than the last ten years combined. In disruption we can find opportunity.
However, my call is that you do not wait for a daily newspaper to close. Act now. Rely less, today, on newspaper traffic.
Acting now looks like this:
- Placing newspapers in a lower cost location, away from the entrance and high value real-estate.
- Sourcing new product categories that you do not carry today.
- Pitching the new categories in marketing outside the business.
- Getting the business known as a destination for multiple sought-after categories in your area, categories people would drive at least an hour to shop and purchase.
- Spending less time on what is declining and more time on what could be.
- Doing everything possible to ensure your business does not look traditional.
I appreciate that no one involved with the newsagency channel wants newspapers to close. However, it will happen. The test is whether you have, by then, created a business that will flourish without daily newspaper traffic.
Hi Mark
No papers
no lotto
How many stores do you think will close?
What do you think should take its place?
Andrew, all could. However, for the best outcome, you should have started. Many categories will drive new traffic. What works will depend on newsagents and the marketing groups. I know newsXpress and know it pitches an integrated mix of options.
It is all about RETAIL for the future not a (news)agency. Agency lines have smaller margins including news/magazines and can take a lot of floor/wall space at a high rental cost. I see some old traditional newsagencies now in premises too large for their current and future needs. Downsizing does not have to be bad if you have the right product mix. I am a former newsagency person, now retired, who started to implement change some years ago.
Opportunities abound, especially for those without the requirements of lotteries. The core focus today (and should have been for several years now) should be on new traffic, shoppers who do not currently even consider the business. It is possible to recast the business. However, doing this means pulling back from looking like anything similar to a newsagency – hence my comment re lotteries.
What about magazines Mark, to you think they have the same future as newspapers?
James, well done to you! You effected change and got out…. how good was that?
Sharyn, I think magazines will be different to papers. I some segments we are seeing growth. Newsagents have not relied on traffic for magazines to the extent they have for papers.
Ken, there are plenty in the channel doing well, achieving growth, with profitable businesses. You failed, we get that. Move on.
Seriously could not happen soon enough for me !
i still more papers than mags. i hope mags closing earlier than newspapers and make my workload lighter