Vale, Ted Rogan
Ted Rogan was managing director of GNS through its critical formative years. I first met him in the very early days of Group as it was commonly referred to at the time, it was at one of their first trade shows in the back streets of Sydney somewhere.
Ted was a force to be reckoned with. He certainly had his way of doing things. Once you navigated that and demonstrated value for newsagents, he was on your side.
One GNS was well established in NSW, Ted led the expansion interstate and for this he was, for a while, a target of interstate jealousy / rivalry. He didn’t care, though. As a good CEO, he focussed on what he thought was right for the business.
In the early 2,000s there were some political stoushes I got to see from close quarters. Ted tended to not let personality get in the way of what he thought was right for the business, leaving some opponents worse off.
One of the last times I saw ted was in the mid 2000s. It was a dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Sydney. I was on the ANF Board at the time and the dinner was organised for an informal discussion about the GNS / ANF relationship. Chinese was selected because we’d been told ted enjoyed the cuisine. It was a terrific discussion abut the channel as it was then, the changes already evident and a mutual desire to help local newsagents.
Ted played a critical role in GNS for many many years, making it an important business for newsagents at the time. The Board always had his back, which, in hindsight, may not have been ideal as it took GNS many years after Ted’s departure for the Ted influence to leave the building. Those years have not played out as well as they might for GNS.
Ted Rogan played an important and valuable role in the stationery side of the Australian newsagency channel for many years and for that he deserves to be remembered well.
In searching online today, I found this from the AFR from 1994:
VETERAN SURVIVOR OF A TOUGH SALES GAME
The newsagency supply business is about as competitive as it gets. Competition has brought the wholesale price of exercise books down to 1974 levels and “category killers” such as Coles Myer’s Officeworks are emerging all the time to bite off chunks of the market.However, a Sydney-based company, Group Newsagency Supplies, is not only protecting its own territory, but has been on the march in Queensland, seizing 15% of the state’s wholesale stationery supply business within 12 months and planning to gain another 15% in the next year. GNS operates as a unit trust in which its retail customers invest, and it has supplied newsagencies for 30 years. Serious rivals have come and gone in this time, including ANCOL and Linkline. GNS has outgrown four premises and has become the leading supplier to newsagents in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
The managing director, Ted Rogan, 52, has spent half his life with GNS. He left his job as a Woolworths store manager to buy a newsagency. “When I joined GNS, it was like a secret society. The four or five people in the group only bought for themselves, and you could join only by invitation. I have always believed that if you were not big enough you could not buy well enough. I wanted others in the industry to share the benefits.”
Not surprisingly, the GNS philosophy is to look after its customers, who own the business through the unit trust structure. To buy from GNS, a newsagent must become a member of the group. Members pay a 2% levy on each order, to a maximum of $5000. In return they receive units in the trust. The accumulation of units gives a member rights to join the trust board. If a unit-holder resigns, the value of the units held is repaid. The levy fund is used for prompt payment of suppliers’ accounts, which has ensured good relations with suppliers, and bargaining power.
The idea of operating GNS as a unit trust was born 10 years ago. Rogan recalls one meeting at which the members cheered the announcement of a loss and passed the hat around to pay the deficit. Another time the hat went round was when 21 of the 40 present chipped in $860,000 to buy a bigger warehouse. The operation has moved, but those who contributed still own the building as a separate property trust.
“We will work with anyone, including competitors, to keep costs down,”Rogan says. “It’s not difficult to buy supplies from 250 companies and sell to 2000 retailers. It’s just sticking items on shelves.” Members can have their orders delivered or collect them at a large cash-and-carry warehouse. The 40%who do this save at least 15% on their total costs.
Over the years, companies in the industry have established territories for marketing viability or protection. ANCOL of South Australia was servicing Broken Hill jointly with GNS, which was unprofitable for both. Because ANCOL made deliveries on the way to other markets, GNS stepped aside in the interests of customer service.
GNS has resisted attempts by others to move into its patch. When the 1300-agent Newspower of Queensland tried to invade NSW, GNS drove the intruders back over the border, and kept going, picking up a share of the Queensland market for good measure.
As business has grown, the need to keep pace with 15,000 product lines, more than 2000 members ordering or visiting, 250 suppliers, 80 employees, stock valued at $5 million and annual sales of $50 million has meant the introduction of computerised
sales information systems for members and the operation’s 20 sales reps. This gives the user up-to-the-minute sales and price information, and the ability to make or change orders and check warehouse stock levels. GNS has spent more than $250,000 on information systems in the past two years.
GNS is planning a newsagency franchise called News Four, partly in response to competition from new groups such as Coles Myer’s mooted 60-store Officeworks chain. Rogan says that with the continued withdrawal from the local scene of many traditional retail outlets, it is increasingly important that newsagents reassert themselves as personalities in – and contributors to- the “village” community, and that the public can see this is happening.
Thanks to Graeme Day for drawing attention to Ted’s passing.
