We are selling out of papers earlier in the day than we used to. Getting additional stock is impossible. The only option is to guide shoppers to the nearby supermarket, which always has stock.
It is a fight to get an increase in planned supply and impossible to get additional stock on sell out.
All this feeds into our consideration as to the future role of papers in the store.
I’d be interested in comments from retail only newsagents.
Footnote: if you work for a publisher and plan to contact me to help. While I appreciate it, the reality is that your intervention should not be necessary in a good newspaper distribution model.
Frequently selling out, we can get extras but no longer request. The distributor reduces our copies when we make returns but never increases when we sell out. Was resisting this but now view situation as a managed decline towards total cessation.
We have no wish to be the last newsagent in the area and are working towards avoiding that poisoned chalice.
Yes and in tbe past with News where I could balance between a supermarket needs and my needs as the supermarket was supplied and billed by myself they are now a News account and I no longer have this ability. I have often had the case where they have retruns of 30 to 40 and I have sold out before morning tea.
This a comment from a Newsagent who does both retail and distribution in Country NSW (still often the norm in country NSW).
As per Colin.
Opportune topic as we were discussing this last night.
I have no doubt they are eating themselves.
They either have no vision of the future or news agencies are not in it.
Maybe both.
We are a subby now.
Delivery company makes errors with deliveries, including sending other labelled subbies papers to us, and is uncontactable unless by email.
They obviously don’t contact their own driver, because the mistakes have been repeated after multiple reports.
And yes, we regularly run out, but their system apparently knows our business better than we do
We have been a subagent for a long time now after handing our run back. Never have we received adequate supplies whilst being a retail only newsagent.
Who cares? Not me and certainly not the publishers. They are on a quest to minimise returns even at the cost of sales, so why bother?
I am too busy selling $200++ artworks or pieces of furniture to worry about papers. They are irrelevant in my “newsagency”
Fairfax (Nine) or News?