The royal wedding is popular with many who received magazines today with wedding content having sold out. Those receiving top-up or initial supply of wedding issues Thursday (as not all newsagents received wedding issues today) will need to promote. We know from decay data that 60% – 75% of weeklies sell on a Monday. This week we need to change that and drive a bump Thursday. Achieving this requires us promoting outside the business, giving people a reason to return.
Such ineptitude. The publishers know for months the day of the event. What happens, 3 copies turn up and are sold within 30 minutes. They have the data through xchangit. But they cannot or will not tailor their distributions to match demand.
My store has strong sales for Royal publications and with Xchangit the data was there for a bumper supply.
Yet I still get Boar Hunter and a mismatch of firearm magazines that I have early returned for 2 years.
Cretins.
Colin the XIT data is not shared across publishers. Bauer and Pacific do their own allocations and would now know of your broader results. The management of the data by the distributor should be better than this. If you get a moment, check your local supermarket.
Ok if I was unclear in making 2 points.
The publishers knew of the wedding for months, but the reaction on Monday was totally underwhelming.
The distributor GG does know my sales data. They know I have sales that reflect a traditional catchment area, they know I have strong “Royalty” sales. They might like to know my “bookings” for Thursday are already significant, all potential added sales.
Thursday morning is a big test for the sanity of the magazine industry. If I receive no extra Wedding related mags and the same numbers of crap that have no relevance to my early returns, then my path to taking down the “Newsagency” shingle will be reinforced.
I hope I am proved wrong. It would be nice to see GG get something right.
Colin, my understanding is that Thursday you will get royal focussed titles and more in the next week with new content.
On the allocations, Bauer and Pacific handle their own.