Since News Corp. continues to favour Coles with pricing of $6.00 for Inside Out magazine I see no reason to promote the more expensive newsagency version priced at $8.20. This long-term campaign by News disrespects newsagents and shows the desire of News Corp. to switch shoppers from our small business channel to the giant Coles.
With the Facebook user community continuing to grow – 1.5b monthly users in Q4 2015 – it is a vitally important place to promote your business and the brand under which you trade. Promoting on Facebook is an easy way to reach people outside your business to attract them in. It is also an easy marketing platform through which to track engagement results including demographic information.
Here are numbers from this morning of people who like or follow the corporate page of the newsagency banner groups:
These numbers are important as they speak to the base community easily reached by each of the groups when promoting offers and opportunities available in member businesses.
The numbers themselves need to be considered a springboard as plenty of Facebook users share posts they like to friends who, in turn, can share to their friends. In one recent promotion for which I have data the ripple effect reached an additional 15,000 people.
Note: I could only find one Newspower national page and it had not been updated since August last year. If anyone is aware of another page please let me know.
The TV commercial from News Corp’s Herald Sun promoting the Dr Seuss book series lists three supermarkets by brand yet lists newsagents as, well, newsagents. The folks at News ought to respect brands newsagents trade under more than this. Their failure to list the brands demonstrates a preference for the supermarket brands in my view.
Here is a photo from the TVC – listing the supermarkets.
This photo shows part of the stationery department of a store I visited in Nuremberg last week. I am sharing it as it represents a different approach to stationery layout compared to what we see in newsagencies and other stationery retailers in Australia.
I like the consistent fixture colour and that it does not detract from the product itself. I also like the lower height units at the front and their use for uplifting products, to draw the shopper into the department.
I draw plenty of inspiration from this photo.
I was in Germany for four days last week on business and got to see a range of newsagency and related businesses. I saw two types of businesses: small, almost kiosk like in size, shops with around 50 magazine titles and convenience lines; and, large format stores in high traffic locations like railway stations and shopping malls or precincts.
Based on what I saw, Germans love their magazines and newspapers.
The photo below is from the entrance to a shop in Munich. I saw this same type of entrance in several shops. I like that it is open, easy to see around the whole shop.
Here is the entrance to another shop. The same approach: a low profile display unit for volume titles in the entrance.
Here is the entrance to another magazine shop in Munich.
Here is the extraordinary range in the kids magazine section in a magazine shop in Nuremberg railway station:
TV and related titles:
Weeklies from a Munich store.
Crossword titles from a Munich store.
Newspapers in a the business in the Nuremberg railway station.
Looking a plenty of retail in Germany, magazines are not as readily available in Germany as in Australia but most of the shops that do sell them have an extraordinary range of titles. The bigger shops have more than double the magazine range we have. This stands to reason with the German population more than three times that of Australia.
I do wonder if the size of the range of magazines in the bigger stores is a function of there being fewer such stores.
I picked up plenty over the course of the week, not only in relation to magazines but in other product categories important to us.
Newsagents were given three days notice about a promotion by APN’s. The email promoting promotion of a complex Scratch and Win competition was sent at the close of business Wednesday.
Sending an email late on Wednesday results in a lower readership.
When will they learn that promotions need to be simple. The process they are imposing on newsagents is cumbersome and time consuming.
Newsagents were not given an opportunity to opt out. With barely two days notice APN promoted the participating newsagents 0 without any other communication with those newsagents.
Promotions like this, that do little to drive sustained revenue growth, are a tax on the limited time resources of newsagents.
It is also frustrating that the prize pushes people to fuel outlets and not back to newsagencies.
Overall, this appears to a poorly considered and poorly executed promotion with little regard for newsagents and the time required of them to execute.
Newspaper publishers need to be smarter if they want to run promotions that genuinely serve the needs of their products and retail newsagents.
For at least three hours this week stand at or near the entrance of your business and say hello to all who enter and thank people as they leave. Choose the busiest three hours.
Look for insights you might otherwise have missed had you not done this. Hopefully, these insights help you run a better business.
While this tip is aimed at the owners of the business, any team member acting as a greeter will reduce the opportunity for theft and increase the level of personal service provided shoppers and, thought this, overall revenue.
Paint your nails in a colour that is meaningful to you. It could be your sport team colours, the local school colours or colours with some other personal significance such as supporting a charity (as has happened previously).
If you usually have painted nails, what you do for this exercise must be noticeably different.
The goal is to get people talking, to raise awareness of the ‘thing’ you have painted your nails for. Hopefully, it is community group or charity that will benefit from you talking about them
The painted nails, especially for guys, ought to act like a speed hump, they ought to get people taking notice.
When was the last time you looked at video captured by your security cameras? Most time I see retailers do this it is to look for something specific. My tip today is to look without a specific goal. Play it on fast forward and be open to learning things about your business that you have missed.
Every time I do this with retailers we see things they did not expect. It could be employee behavior, shopper behavior or a realisation about hot-sports in the business.
A half hour fast forwarding through vision can be enlightening.
US magazine publisher Rodale has cut 40 jobs. I mention this to note that Australian magazine publishers and distributors are not alone facing the challenges of disruption and to offer another example of changes we can expect in 2016.
Everywhere I look I see too many magazine titles chasing a declining interest in print. The only solution as I see it is fewer titles. Fewer magazine publishers would allow publishers to get a larger piece of the pie. However, that is unlikely to happen in the short to medium term.
The Melbourne Gift Fair this weekend is the first of the year. It is a small fair with a reputation for nothing that new given the major fairs overseas releasing new products are happening around now. While I’ll attend the fair, if it is like last year I do not expect to discover too many opportunities I am not across.
I would be interested to hear if others are attending.
Newsagents in South Australia were sent this letter by from News Corp’s Adelaide Advertiser yesterday. It is a thank you for support for promotional activity.
While the letter is good and, I am sure, appreciated by newsagents, there is more to consider here beyond the commission made from selling promotional products. remember, these promotions are designed to serve sales of newspapers.
From the Advertiser and all outposts of News Corp. I would like to see data provided by News on the benefit to newsagents beyond the sale of promotional items. Here is my question: Did the promotional items generate sustained new sales of the supported newspapers or is it only revenue from the promotional products on which newsagents can count?
This question is important given the paltry margin on promotional items offered in most states. The case put by all publishers in such situations is the real profit is from a sales boost beyond the promotion. So, it would be good to see this data – what over the counter sales boost did the promotions generate?
I do note that in South Australia, newsagents receive the best commission for promotional products. Kudos to the local news Corp. office for this.
I had contact with IPS management yesterday about why they were closed after 3pm. Looking at a year of call data they found that less than five calls a week come in after 3pm. They decided to cut hours and thereby reduce labour costs.
The only reason I discovered this is because a newsagent complained to me. While I understand labour is a high cost to any business, customer service is important, especially when it comes to niche magazine titles only available in newsagencies.
One way any company can reduce labour hours is to improve online services, to enable those who might call to resolve any issue online through a smart website. This is something IPS ought to act on.
Ash Long emailed me yesterday with this story of poor customer service by his local newsagent. I share it here with his permission:
I like that the Australian Newsagency Blog has news of new avenues where businesses can be grown and profits maximised.
But I wonder if sometimes a reminder is needed that newsagents must not neglect their core business. As a newspaper publisher, I spend about $250 per week on papers and magazines at the local newsagency. I do not seek discounts, I do not receive loyalty rewards. I pay by cash, as I have done over the past 22 years.
It has been drummed in to me at this blog for newsagents to promote their ‘putaway’ service. So, when I had to be away interstate last weekend, I asked the counter-staff woman to please put aside the Thursday-Sunday editions of the Herald Sun and The Age, and that I would return in the following week to pay and retrieve the papers.
It wasn’t done. The counter staff said the newsagent counter-manded their efforts, and returned the papers, so my request was unfulfilled. Not a big deal, you might say. Only 8 newspapers. But those issues were important to me. I was only trying to be a good and loyal customer. The newsagent did not let me know of his decision. I have left a message for him, but he still has not called with an explanation (or an apology).
I feel disrespected as a customer. I feel that the newsagent should no longer have my $1000-a-month purchases. I feel that I should take my business elsewhere. He does not know his customers, and he has neglected his main game.
Whether we like it or now, the newsagency shingle binds all businesses that trade under it. Poor service by one can reflect poorly on all newsagents in the eyes of the customer experiencing poor service.
We are in challenged businesses with some of our core products suffering from severe disruption. Add to this the challenges of the economy, more focused competitors and myriad other factors and you have tough circumstances for many newsagency businesses. Why, therefore, would you treat a long-term customer in this way.
If the story as shared is accurate there is no excuse I can think of. A regular customer offering to spend money for little or no effort is to be respected and served well.
I am sure there are plenty of newsagents who would love Ash Long’s business.
Late in 2015 JB HiFi retail outlets started selling greeting cards. They put in a carefully selected range sourced from Hallmark. Their hip looking purpose built card units have seen are usually placed in a high traffic location, near to the counter.
The THREE FOR $10 offer is compelling. The range carefully targeted at the typical JB shopper.
My understanding is that JB management made the decision to offer a selection of cards and then looked for a supplier. They designed the display unit internally and set their own pricing.
When I first saw the display in-store two months ago I was impressed with the range. It looked different, fresh. Then I realised we have access to all these cards – yet we display them in a more traditional (boring?) way that does not allow them to be realised as being as hip or on-trend as they appear in this purpose designed fixture from JB.
Here is an electronics and entertainment retailer stepping into our space and doing it well. It will be interesting to see how cards perform for them. My guess is they will do well as the stand appeals to their shopper demo. If they are successful, it will be a combination of range curation, fixture design and shop floor placement.
We can do this folks. We can create a secondary display of cards that reaches a shopper not entering our businesses to purchase cards. We can full the stand with a selection as carefully chosen as the range from JB. And, we can fund the price point – there is enough margin in cards to do this, especially if we achieve genuine incremental revenue.
While some will be angry about the JB move, the smarter response would be to engage with cards in a fresh way, like JB has, to make a pitch that reaches those shopping with us who do not purchase cards already. We can do this.
We are in a highly disrupted marketplace where the boundaries of speciality retail channels are more blurred than ever, where retailers are chasing revenue to achieve the deepest basket possible from the traffic they achieve in-store.
So, instead of being angry or frustrated about this move, think about what you can do to create similar opportunities in your newsagency.
It’s on you. This is not a supplier challenge to resolve. No, it is your challenge because it is your newsagency.
For too long we have approached greeting cards in the same boring way. Too many newsagents have stood by watching sales remain flat or decline. Our mediocrity has allowed others to enter the space. We should have been so on top of our game, so innovative, that competitors did not risk investing in cards.
That is irrelevant now. JB is here and others are coming. We need to be more focussed than ever on our card offer. We need to be innovative beyond our own imagination.
We are all set to end our jigsaw focus in January with a celebration today of WORLD PUZZLE DAY. As well as in-store promotion we are also promoting this online as we have had terrific success attracting new shoppers for jigsaw puzzles, especially harder to get products such as 18,000 piece and more puzzles.
The jigsaw shopper is loyal once they trust your commitment to their passion.
Calendar and card company Andrews McMeel is to close their Australian office as announced today. Many newsagents sell their quality and sought-after products. Here is the announcement including a further update:
ANDREWS MCMEEL PUBLISHING OFFICE CLOSING
US Publisher Andrews McMeel is closing their Australian office.
Local Managing Director, Deborah McQuoid will manage the transition of the business until the end of March, 2016. All AMP staff member positions have been made redundant.
”Andrews McMeel Publishing US will maintain an ongoing direct book distribution arrangement with Hardie Grant Books and they are currently looking at potential ways to support AMP calendar customers in Australia and New Zealand “stated Deborah MCQuoid. “The business however will no longer be served by a local office”.
Paperblanks, which has been managed through the AMP office, will continue independently with no changes to sales or distribution. All contact details remain the same. Tel 02 9904 5200.
———————–
Update:
With regards the Calendar program for 2017, the US are setting up a couple of alternative arrangements. Stores will be able to purchase AMP calendars via Ingram and the US
has confirmed a deal with Brown Trout for local distribution of selected AMP lines including licenses and the popular Day to Day formats.
I love this BuzzFeed list from Scott Bryan: 15 Secrets Newsagents Won’t Tell You.
Thanks to Steve Denham for pointing me to this.
We have had an extraordinary January thanks to the January is Jigsaw month promotion from newsXpress.
Not only have unit sales been excellent but the gross profit – 62.5% – has helped drive higher overall gross profit performance for the business.
The promotion has attracted new traffic and leveraged impulse purchases from people entering the business to purchase other items.
The excellent result has been achieved through thoughtful buying, out of store marketing and continuously fresh in-store promotion.
Whereas two years ago we did not sell jigsaws, today it is a important product category for us, something for which we have become known.
Since we refuse to engage in the race to the bottom that is Back to School, we are glad to have a promotion that is blue ocean, something no one else near is is doing. The results are well worth it: new traffic, high margin, popular.
Newsagents who ask how they can grow their businesses, how they can confront the challenges we sell elsewhere in the newsagency model, ought to look at opportunities like this, opportunities that are left-field, non-traditional. With careful buying, good displays and limited external marketing you can create success for a category you are not known for, from a category newsagencies are not known for.
Ask yourself – what am I doing today that is different for my business and for my type of business. If your answer is nothing them you are on a downhill slide to lower margin and less traffic. Seriously. It is that black and white.
Now, in 2016, more than ever before, you have to innovate. Not just in one part of your business but in many. You have to try completely new products through which you can pitch a new voice and attract new shoppers. You have to do this with commitment. And once you have done it you have to do it again and again.
We are in an era where success in small and independent retail comes from many many small steps. There is no one big thing.
This terrific success we have with jigsaws will be repeated but there will be more new things, more new products and opportunities through which we redefine the business through the next phase. This is the world today, continuous change. There is no destination. And that is something to love about these times.
The Star Wars themed Colossus Crosswords from Lovatts is a title you could place with Star Wars related product in-store. This single and simple move could be enough to get more people considering the title than if you leave it with all your other crossword titles – that are only browsed and considered by people wanting a crossword title.
It is action newsagents will take if they want to grow magazine sales.
We have to do this, we have to look at title covers and ask ourselves what we can do to get this issue noticed. Such consideration is beyond the masthead. It is about this cover itself.
The December 2015 quarter was tough for many newsagencies, especially with print media products. Here are the year on year same store comparison numbers.
Benchmark results by key departments:
While these numbers do not reflect good news for the channel, the positive side of the numbers are good for the businesses reporting them. For example, close to half newsagencies reported a decline in greeting card sales while almost the same number report growth. The difference between the two, the gulf, is considerable. Allowing for local situations, there is a point difference of eight between the average decline and the average growth. This is considerable. The businesses achieving 6% year on year growth from high margin card sales are in a different situation than those experiencing 2% year on year decline.
Look at gifts, the story is similar but even more complex. While the gam between those reporting growth and those reporting decline is considerable, more than ten points, that 32% of newsagents do not have a gift department is alarming given their greeting card sales. Even more interesting is the difference in gifts sold. Whereas in an average newsagency, gift revenue is equal to around twenty percent of card revenue, there are newsagencies where gift revenue is more than double card revenue. These are businesses aggressively pursuing change.
I saw data for one store that is a stunning turnaround. Indeed, the result was so good I made a YouTube video about it and other stores in this benchmark group: https://youtu.be/f-YilFlFG68
In my own newsagency: My key category numbers off a good base, are: Books: up 500+% due to trend chasing. Diaries: up 219%. Cards up 19%. Gifts up 60% and account for 15% of sales; Magazines down 1% and weeklies down 3%; Stationery up 5%, Plush up 18% and accounting for 9.15% of sales. Traffic: down 2%; Average Sale Value: up 9%; Average Item Value: up 11%.
2016 OUR YEAR TO EMBRACE
Success is there for the taking in any newsagency situation. I firmly believe that. In cities and country towns. In shopping malls and on the high street. We, each of us, can make our own success by embracing change and being serious about how we run our businesses – through the deliberate choices we make.
We have more control over our businesses than ever before. What we do with this is up to us. The trends affecting us are obvious. Our future is ours to own.
Please take this benchmark report as a call to action. Make 2016 the year you want.
Take a careful look at this photo and see the value of thoughtful product placement. Click on the image to see a larger high-res version of the photo.
Look at the squirrel: he is looking up at the acorn-like ornament being held by a hand above his head. The hand is attached to a larger figure outside the photo. This thoughtful placement places each item in a connected scene. The scene represents a story. It is theatre, in-store.
Rather than lining products up as you see in mass retailers, this display is more thoughtful, more entertaining and more engaging. It is the type of display you see in a higher end homewares or gift store. It is a display newsagents selling gifts could do. All is takes is thoughtful engagement with the products you purchase with care, with a view to telling a story.
Telling a story like this requires obsession with storytelling, in the belief that the story will drive sales. It does drive sales. I saw it for myself.
We can’t be average in visual march rising choices we make in our newsagencies for average makes shopping with us unmemorable and there is no commercial future in that. We have to thoughtfully buy and thoughtfully engage on the shop floor.
Looking around my newsagency a couple of days ago I saw plenty of opportunities for this level of engagement. Opportunities for linking products, even products outside the same departments. All it took was inspiration from this squirrel display.
Footnote: a reader messaged me asking why write this on Australia. Well, many newsagents are working and with most businesses closed I figured content that challenges might get more attention than at a busier time.
We have been clearing out colour themed products at the sales counter, items that appeal this time of the year and that customers notice because of the colour blocking. It is fascinating seeing people impulse purchase notebooks from this counter location. The actions are a reminder of the value of thoughtful counter placement in the newsagency.
Go down to the back of your stationery department, yes, down the aisle to the quietest part of the shop. Dig out items like these that will look good placed next to each other. Have a crack it driving impulse purchases of stationery from the counter.
Just as you notice a speed hump as it gets in the way of a smooth drive, shoppers notice items they do not expect as they go abut their day to day business.
This is all about to being average.
