Randalls newsagency in Bourke New South Wales is a perfect example of innovative retail in our channel, offering products outside what has been traditional for the local newsagency business, and taking that diversity online to reach shoppers far away from Bourke. In a town of less than 2,000 that is 800km from Sydney, here you have inspiring retail.
Nancy and the team at Randalls newsagency and their website, Back O Bourke Collective run an awesome business, a business that challenges what we think of as a newsagency.
This series is about showing journalists and others that the local Aussie newsagency has changed and while, for sure, there are some running old-school newsagencies rooted in the 60s and 70s, many have transformed their newsagency businesses to be fresh, inviting and vibrant. many are running local newsagency businesses that are changing, evolving, meeting new opportunities.
This is retail in 2022 and beyond, especially local retail, and even more especially local newsagency retail.
The Aussie newsagency channel was created in the 1880s to deliver news publications to the goldfields of Victoria. For decades ours were agency businesses, doing the bidding of the companies for which we were agents. It is only in the last 20 years that some in our channel decided to be retailers rather than agents.
Today, the newsagents who are growing their businesses are retailers first with either no agency business or modest agency business that does not dominate what they do in their businesses.
The local Aussie newsagency has come a long way from what Aussie journalists and others think of us as. The more show how far we have come, the better. This series is about shining a light on some good examples of this, some good examples of retail newsagency businesses that are quite different to what people expect when they think of the classic Aussie newsagency.
Shops like Randalls newsagency in Bourke NSW are a beacon not only for retail newsagents but for local retail more broadly. They are showing that location and size do not matter. They are showing that you can grow by thinking outside of the physical boundaries of your local town.
Whether it is in-store online, there are no borders to what a local newsagency can be, and this is exciting.
What is the future of the local Aussie newsagency? Well, that is up to each newsagent, each retailer in the channel. There is no channel-wide problem. rather, there are thousands of local retailers making decisions every day that will determine the future, and from where I sit, with what I get to see from many colleagues, the future is bright.
This shop and the others in this series are all so inspiring. I agree they look nothing like people think the local newsagent looks like.
Yes all those stores are fantastic gift shops, why insist on calling them newsagency? Why not ditch the irrelevant name and give a great gift shop name to the business?
Jagg, plenty do. They remain part of the channel for various reasons. Some have lotteries. Some have papers and newspapers. There is no insistence on what they are called.
Kate, Jagg, Mark,
Yes it’s sadly true that the channel has an identity crisis in that the average public believe newsagencies are “yesterday’s newsagency business not what they used to be” as was re enforced by publishers and their move to “take back” the Home Delivery and Distribution network in Sydney.
The great transitional work illustrated superbly here, shows the new “Social Expression” connection we can have with the community that was once newspapers.
One banner name change industry -wise would be a great start. However there are a number of banners including the well promoted one on this blog the newsXpress brand, of which not all have consistency in presentation or theme, although this is not for the lack of trying from its owner Mark Fletcher.
Any”new” acceptance as an industry one would therefore have to be transitioned from the generic one as newsagent or newsagency to another acceptable move.
Murdoch very successfully transitioned the failing afternoon newspaper in NSW, the Daily Mirror, with his morning paper The Daily Telegraph to the Telegraph Mirror. He did this for a transitioning period then when all was accepted changed it to the Daily Telegraph. We can learn from this,can’t we?
This could be achieved by an independent new or current Newsagents Association ,Federal or State based.
Current banners would still exist with no doubt new banners trying to attract a different audience with different industry and public appeal. This lack of identity as a whole, is what is missing and it alone is why everyone is writing us off.
Associations ought to sort this out otherwise ask themselves just “Who and What do we represent”? after all they ,the Associations of ALL industries represent many different groups-The Retailers Association represents many variety of cahin retailers as well as individual members.
All of us can work together to become an “industry” again especially in the public’s eyes. This will eventually consolidate a present lagg ing in Goodwill achievement when selling.
A few years ago, newsXpress announced to its members they can call their businesses what works best for them locally. Plenty have.
The term newsagency has fading currency. What you call your business locally matters locally. This was a key reason for the change.
Associations cannot sort out the naming question because they have no mechanism for enforcement.
What matters most is what each business is called locally – to the people they hope to reach. In many own case, I have shops with a local name, and, then, online, a completely different name. This is the world we are in today.
But the question over names is a distraction from a series of posts about inspiring businesses that are part of the newsagency channel.
Your answer is 100% except the point of reference to the channel is not to be taken as a deterrent to these wonderful efforts however to be supportive of this transition.
Look to the brighter side the uplift these people are showing the public and yes it’s inspiring to those who wish to follow. The other reference is the cognitive connection between the previously known newsagency stores and the present new look, going forward. The total industry representation from a newsagents Association has the advantage of numbers which being collectively represenative of the Essential Service now labelled Critical Retail banner. Please welcome the great work forwd howver do not overlook this status as it helped many current stores and the public at large during COVID. Other stores do not have the same parliamentary priviledge such as this and joining them outside of Associated representation may well be an unforseen disadvantage