On top of corona challenges, small business newsagents are confronted by channel-specific challenges right now because News Corp., Tabcorp, Ovato and others are letting them down on basic business communication.
Ovato made magazine distribution changes in NSW/ACT and even this morning there are newsagents unsure of when magazines will arrive and where they will be delivered.
News Corp. closed papers and changed distribution arrangements and there are Queensland newsagents a week on still not getting papers until close to lunchtime.
Big supplier businesses need to do better if they are genuinely interested in small business retailer business. I suspect their major customers, like the supermarkets, will have received better and more regular communication.
If their comms is anything to go by, they don’t value small business newsagent business in the medium to long term. Maybe that is the message.
The publishers only have one option, on line digital. Hard copies are losing money and any relationship in hard copy distribution is part of the loss making problem.
The message is, newsagents are a loss making problem we can do without.