We have found a good storage place at the counter for the boxes of AFL team cards which arrived on Friday. We have 100 boxes to move so the under-the-glass display acts as advertising as well as functional storage.
These cards and the Select Champions cards will be very popular over the next few weeks based on sales so far.
Minonline.com has begun working on a directory of magazines that are on Twitter – the 140 character mini blog feed website. This is another way to introducing consumers to magazine brands online. Read what the folks at MinOnline have to say aboout Twitter and magazine engagement at their blog.
Nicole White from a newsagency in Castle Hill has created a Facebook group which calls on the NSW Government to NOT sell NSW Lotteries. Facebook members can join group and support small business newsagents who rely on NSW Lotteries products to generate traffic. The pitch at the Facebook page is:
NSW State Government is conidering selling off NSW Lotteries (is it because they are broke?)
Once an asset like that is sold – it can NEVER be bought back!
Support your local Newsagent and say “NO Mr Rees – do not sell off our Lottery”.
I know from my own knowledge of how NSW newsagents are treated and how marketing opportunities are funded that the Government ownership of NSW lotteries serves consumers and newsagents retailers well. In other states, under commercial ownership, retailers fare more poorly as do consumers from what I see.
I’d urge you to support the Facebook group.
The Star Wars Official collectors models partwork has been out three days and has already sold very well. Even though we received almost no marketing collateral we have given the title prime space at the entrance to our blokes magazine aisle. We know this title will appeal to our customers. While partworks have their challenges, they are efficient titles for us to sell – basket data shows that partworks customers are more likely to purchase other items when collecting the latest edition.
UPDATE: We sold out in our newsagencies today and are chasing extra stock for back orders. This is a very successful launch.
We are almost our of the 2009 season AFL Record. Sales are close to 30% ahead of this time last year – considerably against the trend of other magazines. This is another reason we are promoting all things AFL strongly – there is clearly excellent interest.
We received the NRL Champions card album at one of our newsagencies in Victoria this week but no cards. Not sure what that’s about – this is Victoria after all! While we can fix this, we have to pay to ship the unwanted NRL stock back. This is a problem for our channel – the cost of fixing mistakes not of our doing. if we received cards we might have gine the NRL a go.
The Future of magazines is the topic from a broader presentation published March 17 by Apple about the iPhone 3.0. Click here to see the magazine specific section of the presentation. Whereas in the past to get a magazine on the iPhone you have to buy each title separately, the new iPhone will offer a subscription payment option. This will mean that publishers will be able to easily give away trials and then convert to paid subscriptions. This is what I’d be doing if I were them. The iPhone 3.0 is green, effficient and cheap to access for publishers.
We have heard of problems vending Vodafone recharge through Tafmo (Touch) facilities. eziPass, pulling product direct from e-pay, is vending Vodafone recharge without an issue. Vodafone last month announced the appointment of e-pay as its exclusive distributor.
eziPass is available free to all newsagents – except the 300 running the POS Browser software.
Thanks to the efforts on the QNF, the ACCC has announced that it proposes to grant authorisation to collective bargaining arrangements designed to give newsagents a greater voice in the terms and conditions we receive from publishers and distributors of newspapers and magazines. The ACCC announcement quotes ACCC Chairman Graeme Samuel:
“The ACCC accepts that newsagents are generally small businesses that are negotiating with well resourced and experienced large suppliers such as News Limited or Fairfax,” ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, said today.
“In this context, collective bargaining is likely to lead to public benefits by addressing the imbalance in bargaining power between newsagents and the major publishers and distributors.”
This is timely given that new contracts are to be negotiated soon.
We have found ourselves overstocked with diaries at the wrong end of the season. To move these we have purchased professional marketing collateral and created a display on our dance floor with a big WOW! factor. Anyone walking past our Forest Hill store cannot help but see the display.
What I like about the marketing collateral we purchased is the range of sizes – this has enabled us to promote the sale in a more appealing way than we would usually do for something like this.
In the two days this has been up we have seen an encouraging lift in sales. If you need a diary give us a call!
Further to my post yesterday about the inefficiency of the magazines from Express Publications, the photo shows the titles with which their Home magazine competes.
Better Homes and Gardens, Notebook, Real Living, Melbourne Living and Vogue Living all play in the same space except that they are real magazines – they are efficient in use of space, are promoted professionally and are retail friendly. However, these titles compete with various Express titles for space and cash.
Maybe the publishers of these titles could work with newsagents in finding a solution to the space and cash draining Express Publications problem. Too often publishers turn a blind eye to bad behavior from other publishers to their ultimate detriment. They could work with newsagents and help us stop companies from abusing our channel.
MINE from Time Inc. is an experimental customised magazine that combines reader-selected sections from eight publications to create a ‘magazine’ for you. While it is an interesting move, it is all a bit convoluted. There is a print version for 30,000 who sign up and an online version for others.
A print version of a semi-customised magazine is, while interesting, unlikely to gain traction beyond curiosity.
A principle of the Internet is that the content, articles in the case of magazines, want to be free – free from mastheads and free of cost. The Time experiment, with the online version, has, in my view, too many controls to gain the attention of the generation they really want to engage with their brands.
Joe Wickert blogs about a new electronic distribution model he would like to see for magazines – access to any digital magazine for a low all-in fee. There is something like this in Europe already – Relay offers access to 400 titles for 17.90 Euros a month.
From a newsagency perspective this model has nothing to do with us and that’s one reason I see it as blogworthy here.
Peter Cox pulls no punches in his article about newspapers bublished at Business Spectator.
Cutting down trees and selling them on street corners is a dinosaur doomed to extinction in its present form.
I suspect that environmental issues will play a bigger role in shaping the future of print mediathan we have expected.
I am speaking at the QNF Queensland Newsagent’s State Conference on Tuesday next week. I have chosen to speak on: Life with Google: How Google impacts on newsagencies already and how we can embrace the opportunities of a Google world.
While I don’t have the answers, I do hope to open a conversation among newsagents about their future and opportunities of change presented to us.
Google itself is not the challenge, more the catalyst for much needed change in how we structure and operate our businesses. But rather than speak of challenges, I’ll explore opportunities. There are newsagents with flourishing businesses – each one of these started with identifying an opportunity.
As we see more retail evolution in our space – OFIS closing, Officeworks tweaking their model, others moving in and out of products newsagents sell – our role as independent retailers will change. Or, at least, there is opoportunity for us to embrace change. While our major competitors will play more with house brands, we can embrace known brands, brands which are advertised widely, brands which can help newsagents grow stronger retail businesses.
I suspect that from a consumer perspective we are entering a time where brand matters more and where cheap China imports are not as sought after by customers and some newsagents as they used to be?
I was talking with a newsagent yesterday who for several years has purchased cheap Chinese stationery and gift related lines for his shop. He has merchandised these as you would see in a discount store. He enjoyed making money from cheap tennis balls and trinkets.
Since things got tougher economically, sales of this cheap China product have fallen. I think it is because consumers are felling cheap in pursuit of value. Value comes from known brands. Newsagents I speak with who have a solid brand strategy are finding stationery sales good – holding their own or even growing.
I’d expect to see newsagents who have focused on cheap China product to shift focus this year and join the brand-based movement. There is excellent research indicating that consumers flee to known brands in tough times.
I am glad that for ink and toner I’ve only focused on brands like HP, Canon, Epson and Brother and that for stationery I have focused on Post-It, Scotch, and other brands well-known and regularly advertised to consumers.
We are seeing that we can compete with branded product. The more we embrace brands as a channel the better our negotiating position – there are only so many wholesalers through which we purchase after all.
Melbourne Home Design and Living is a magazine which without the generosity of newsagents would most likely not be published. We will carry this title on our shelves for six months, making $1.73 a copy. We need to sell three copies a month to cover costs. Being so thick we have to give it flat-stack space. There was none so something else had to go. Publishers like United Media Group and their magazine distributors do not realise that we have finite space in our shops. The sooner we negotiate commercial terms for access to our real-estate the better.
Melbourne Home Design and Living is primarily a vehicle for advertisers. Glancing through the latest issue, I suspect that this publisher will make more of their revenue from advertising than cover price than compared to a regular magazine. This explains the low cover price for such a thick title. That access to our channel is so cheap lets them get away with this.
The cover price is only about covering logistics and a crumb or two for newsagents. One day we will successfully say no to situations like this. Use of our assets has a cost yet we do not price them this way.
Displaying Dolly this month is a challenge. For almost two weeks we have had this on an aisle end. Now, back in its regular space, we have a problem. The free MP3 speakers which come with the magazine make for a display challenge. We have decided to build high. This draws attention to the offer but does mean we need to rebuild when it is knocked over. On the one hand I want these promotions but on the other I don’t like the disruption to the regular flow of a newsagency.
The Tower Systems Elsternwick office shook and swayed for what felt like a few minutes this afternoon during an earth tremor. What is interesting to me is the way I got confirmation that it was not just our building. Twitter and Facebook both lit up with confirmations. Then the websites for the Herald Sun and The Age. The use of Facebook and Twitter by people for reporting news puts us more in touch those involved. The colour on Twitter feeds about the tremor is fascinating – traditional media cannot match this because they impose themselves between an evolving story and the consumer.
What an excellent example of how we report and consumer news.
Last week it was NW and Woman’s Day bundles together at Big W. This week it is Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day at selected petrol outlets in Brisbane for $8.95. As I blogged last week, discounting like this with the majors, if continued, diminishes the value of the newsagency channel – where 50% of magazines are sold. The last position publishers want is to be more reliant on major retailers yet this is what these bundling deals risk happening.
Among the many maxims in publishing folklore, few harbour as foreboding a warning as that about a newspaper’s masthead.
“Meddle with your masthead at your own peril” goes the dark threat.
This is how Graeme Johnstone opened his article, Evolution of a masthead in extra, the Quarterley newsletter for readers of The Age published at the weekend. Johnstone takes us through the history of the masthead of The Age and some of the issues navigated – well worth a read by anyone interested in newspapers and newspaper mastheads.
Johnstone’s article ends with: And, as they say, muck around with things too much and suffer the consequences.
I wonder how Johnstone would feel when he sees The Age this morning. The newspaper masthead has again been covered by an advertisement – this time for ING Direct. This makes a mockery of Jonstone’s article as it shows the company itself does not value the masthead.
Perhaps the continued selling of these ads to cover the venerable masthead of The Age and other Fairfax newspapers reflects a view about the future of print newspapers held by bean counters in the company and not newspaper people.
At The Superficial (a US based gossip / celebrity blog) on the weekend I noticed an ad for Golden Casket online sales. This is interesting from two perspectives – their pursuit of the demographic likely to be accessing the blog (young) and their promotion of online sales – as opposed to their retail network. While it is sensible for Tatts, owners of the Golden casket, to advertise their online business, I am sure it will frustrate newsagents.
Our channel ought to be looking at how we can promote over the counter sales of lottery products. We have a value proposition which better connects with the lottery consumer. We need to develop a strategy for competing with the online businesses for lottery sales.
The People magazine yearbook has an expected shelf life of four months. It has a cover price of $17.95 and a potential margin for me of $4.48. I need to sell at least a copy a month just to pay for the real-estate it occupies. I still have the stock I received a week ago. If I don’t sell any by early April I will return the stock. The cost of the space and the risk of theft is too great.
I’d expect that People is sold into Australia by the US publisher on a firm sale basis. I can’t see local sales being counted for their US audit. If I am right then why can’t we purchase it firm sale and for a considerably better margin? The high price, too, ought to drive a better margin – because of the higher risk of theft. The current numbers don’t work.
The current situation which gives us little or no control over a title like this accessing our valuable network is unfair to newsagents.
The magazine distributors groan when they read a blog post like this but they soon forget about it because they know that newsagents do not have the guts to fix this problem.
The Hearst Corporation has announced that the last edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will be published today (Tuesday) US time. Read how the newspaper is covering the closure of its print edition here. They are maintaining the online brand – the closure is of the print edition only. Seattle is another major US city to move to one-newspaper status.
Newsagents know about and share in the costs of newspaper distribution. They are a reason that Australian publishers are not currently under the same pressure as US newspaper publishers.
Here in Australia, if a publisher does a home delivery deal, the newsagent carries a portion of the cost, the discount. In the US, my understanding is that the publisher carries the cost of subscription deals.
The move by the people at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will, I suspect, be seen in the future as being smart and ahead of the game. Ad revenue is falling. Circulation is falling. Print distribution costs are increasing. Where print will end is clear to those with open eyes.