The cool designs of the Spencer Burford range are attracting new Back To School customers. It is good to have a range which visually appeals to the students compared to notebooks newsagents have sold in the past – fashion sells after all. While there is a place for traditional designs for school and university notebooks, these new-look products position us with the generation newsagents often struggle to reach.
Chart, a successful Canadian music magazine has announced that its December issue will be its last print edition. The publisher said the move was necessary because of falling advertising, competition from free sites online and increased print and related costs.
Newsagents considering a shop fit need to ensure that magazine fixturing is flexible and can be easily reconfigured for other products. Newsagent shopfitters are not a fan of this approach because they don’t get to build such fixturing.
I have been told that 2009 will not be as big a year for partwork launches as 2008. I am disappointed if this turns out to be true. as partworks are efficient for newsagents: Partwork customers are more committed to a specific newsagency and they are more likely to spend more.
While the partwork distribution process has some challenges, once you have proven your interest is is easy to ensure eyou have the supply you need for your customers.
Chinese New Year falls on January 26 this year. This is the start of fifteen days of celebrations. Cards and red packets will sell up to January 26 and rarely beyond. I am reliably informed that besides money, in a red packet, a cow would be a good fun gift. The City of Sydney website says: people born in the Year of the Ox are placid, patient and have great physical stamina. They are born leaders who stubbornly defend their opinions against any argument. 2009, the Year of the Earth Ox, brings additional straightforwardness and solidity to the Ox making them loyal and focused, with honesty and kindness.
There is good information on Chinese New Year at Chinapage and Wikipedia.
All of this is important to newsagents in support of Chinese New Year cards as well as lottery products as gifts.
Click on the image to see a larger version off the display created by our Frankston team to promote Melbourne Wedding & Bride. As well as the magazine, the display promotes wedding albums, confetti, horseshoes for the bride and wedding invitations.
It is disappointing the title was delivered without marketing collateral.
The latest issue of Healthy Food magazine trumpets the free magazine which comes with it Turning the pack over you see it is the October issue of Healthy Food. I see little value from including the old issue of the same title. Also, bagging the magazine stops browsing and for food titles this is important.
With counter and other premium magazine promotional space tied up, we are promoting the New Idea Australia Day special at our main newspaper stand.
While we usually have magazines in pockets above the newspapers, this is the first time we have so loundly promoted a magazine in this space. We will watch sales with interest over the next few days.
I did this display myself. It looks better in-store than the photo reflects.
As part of our consideration of a reconfiguration of magazine space at Forest Hill, we have stopped using the two display shelves on the perimeter wall around the magazine department and above around a third of our magazines for discount books. This space used to be used for magazines. We have been able to accommodate the magazines into the traditional magazine fixturing below.
While there are issues with introducing another product category above magazines, books were the most logical choice in this period of transition.
We are proactively adjusting our magazine space useage as part of a broader business plan. The alternative is to not change and give magazine distributors continued control over how much retail space we allocate to the department.
Magazines have prime position. We can continue that and release some fringe space from the department for new categories.
the New York Times has an interesting article on the future of the weekly news magazine. We know locally of challenges in this segment thanks to the closure of The Bulletin and the local edition of Time in 2008.
It is not too early to put red packets (or red envelopes as they are known in some places) for Chinese New Year at the counter. We did this Friday, at our main lottery counter. Given that the tradition has a lot to do with luck, it is worthwhile remembering that the preference for the value of what is inside the packet ends in an even number. A lottery syndicate ticket would be a good idea – printed on red paper and with a Chinese New Year theme.
We sold out of Super Food Ideas as expected Friday morning – thanks to our counter promotion. Instead of removing the display, we decided to shift product from our Frankston store until additional product arrives from the distributor. As the sign promised, we had stock on Saturday (yesterday) and sales took off again.
We find ourselves doing this more, shifting product between the stores. We have suggested to magazine distributors that they need to be able to receive electronic advice that we have done this so their records can be adjusted accordingly. I get the sense that it is too hard for them.
Beyond the trashing of the mastehad of The Age newspaper today with another of their home delivery subscription offers is the frustration of this type of campaign for a retail newsagent. They are prepared to give their home delivery customers a 50% discount yet their regular retail customers, who have a lower distribution cost, no reward for loyalty. And they wonder why I will not actively promote their online businesses or subscription offers in-store.
I saw a Papermate TV commercial last night and at the end they tag key retail partners. Newsagents are represented by the N which the ANF replaced in May last year. Not that the N represents a retail channel – it was originally developed to support the home delivery model. Given that home delivery does not have franchise and marketing groups, it would be more appropriate that the N, the new or the old, was used for that activity and that retail was left to the brands which already promote themselves on TV and elsewhere.
Maybe I am wrong but I think the N at the end of the Papermate TV commercial achieves nothing for newsagents. The N is not a retail brand. It is not used consistently. The N artwork changed in May but there is no discipline around achieving this. There is no way to find N newsagents.
I love this Valentine’s Day gift packaging from Hallmark. It is different ot the traditional Valentine’s Day material and will appeal to a broader demographic. While the traditional range is well covered in this year’s Hallmark range, it is this new packaging which draws attention. The nutrition facts on the side show that a lot of thought has been put into developing the creative for this Valentine’s Day box. We are using the box and other items using this design as the centrepiece Valentine’s Day cards and gift packaging.
We refreshed our ACP cookbook offer at Forest Hill this week. We took off all the titles and reallocated space with a segment (or interest) owning each column. From the left, next to the Symply Too Good titles: healthy, salad / summer / veggie, international food, low cost / fast, kids. This is a regularly shopped part of the magazine department and was in need to a mini relay. We will track sales and if a sufficient enough kick is not achieved we may consider moving these titles since it is the second best location in this aisle.
The project took half an hour – including the time necessary to analyse sales data and make decisions.
What we had before, while good for the overall ACP cookbook brand, was not logical for the shopper. Our new layout has some sense and this will help with placing new product and keeping the display tidy. Pretty basic retail stuff really.
Respected legal advisor to the ANF and NANA Hank Spier has commented on the ANF announcement about the QNF application in relation to collective bargaining:
I note the ANF NewsFlash about the QNF application to the ACCC for authorisation of collective bargaining conduct.
ANF is not correct in what it says in that News Flash.
The QNF application is on behalf of QNF,NANA and VANA and seeks to have the ACCC authorise QNF , VANA and NANA to bargain on behalf of their members and anyone who may wish to join them ( opt in )in any such collective bargaining. The reasons for this opt in provision is related to lessons learnt from the Bill Express debacle.
The application does not seek the authorisation of QNF bargaining on behalf of VANA and NANA . The ACCC would never allow such an application.
The 2004 authorisation ends early in 2009 and the QNF application seeks to extend the statutory protection afforded by the authorisation.
In 2004 QNF and ANF applied on behalf of the ANF and the various State newsagents associations for each to collectively bargain on behalf of their members. ANF had conditions imposed on its role in any collective bargaining and could not collectively bargain on a national basis.
The QNF application is along similar lines to the 2004 application.
I am not aware of any ANF application to the ACCC.
N-Stock is the buying business established by VANA to seek out deals for newsagents. The latest promotion sent out today provides further evidence why VANA should try and become a good industry association rather than getting involved in commercial deals. N-Stock prices on some items are more than individual newsagents are paying for the same items. Mistakes like this make N-Stock a laughing stock.
The ANF continues to disucss a Code of Conduct with magazine distributors and publishers. Any code of conduct has to be a two way relationship. It will need levers of commpliance. The ANF does not have any compliance mechanism over newsagents. Given this, why would a supplier agree to KPIs when a newsagent will not?
Outside of this, the ANF sought input from newsagents more than a year ago when it was working on this code. Unfortunately, no feedback was provided to those who provided information, leaving doubt about the position they have put on behalf of newsagents.
I see a code of conduct or some compliance agreement as essential. However, it is better managed through commercial relationships which have compliance mechanisms which can drive better outcomes for both.
While we’d usually wait until OzLotto passes $15 million before we promote beyond the usual posters, we decided to push hard given that the country is in holiday mode and there are more shoppers out, in our eare at least, than usual. The display by our team at Forest Hill is good theatre at the front of the shop.
Magazine publishers, already reeling from a slowdown in advertising and circulation, have gotten slapped with word that a major distribution company is about to jack up the rates it charges to deliver issues to retailers.
Anderson News earlier this week informed publishers that it would impose a 7-cent charge for each copy of a magazine that it delivers to stores, and warned that any publisher that refuses to pay the fee could no longer count on Anderson to distribute its magazines.
Go to the New York Post for more on this story. While the magazine distribution model is different here in Australia, I’d expect distributors to be looking at revenue opportunities from publishers. They are chasing revenue from newsagents through (sometimes but not always) distributing more product they know will not sell. One distributor is working on a book model. Another distributor has started promoting potato chips.
Be sure to read the whole Post article, especially about returns and retailers paying only for scanned sales.
Newsagents need to look seriously at their situation around magazines. Making money only off of what sells does not work for many titles. Our network is our asset and unless we start to price access to that others will make even more from this.
Following four filled to capacity workshops already this year, Tower Systems has scheduled four additional free online Magazine Management training sessions. The additional magazine management training sessions will cover the latest requirements for fficient and compliant magazine EDI returns and control. They are to be held:
Access is free. To book, please go to the Tower website, click on support and select User Meetings. You can have the website update your Outlook calendar as well. You can also book by emailing bookings@towersyste
here is what one newsagent said who participated in one of these sessions last week:
Thank you to Rowan & Michael for the great session on Magazine Management. It was my first experience at online conferencing and I found it very easy to listen and also to see what was going on. I certainly had many of my questions answered and will now need to re-look and have another go at the fine tuning process. I’m sure I’ll be in touch again when I get stuck!! Thanks Guys – much appreciated – especially down here on the south coast of NSW. Regards, Rosemary Rosemary Oates Tuross Head Newsagency
Apple fans are heaping kudos on the version of the USA Today ‘newspaper’ now available free on the iPhone.
Further to my post Wednesday about our counter promotion of Super Food Ideas. We have sold twenty copies in two days. This is almost triple our usual sales in the first two on-sale days. While the oven timer gift is a key driver, customers would not know unless we promoted this at the counter. Most titles we promote at the counter enjoy a considerable sales lift – because we select them carefully.
I was surprised to hear reports today that a retail association has called for a ban on hijabs and hoodies. If someone wants to buy product for which there is an age requirement – tobacco and gambling – then I’d ask for ID. If they are out to steal from the business then there are plenty of other ways to disguise their identity. A ban such as that reportedly proposed would not reduce theft from retail businesses.
I think smart newsagents have a bright future this year – despite the downbeat reports I blog about from time to time about newsapers and magazines. To put my money where my mouth is I have organised 5 WAYS TO KICK START YOUR NEWSAGENCY. This is a two hour workshop packed with business building ideas. The workshop will run in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra. It is free to attend. I promise you will find it worthwhile. No sales pitch, just good business ideas for you. All newsagents are welcome regardless of the marketing group to which you belong or the software you use. This session is about neither – it is about providing you with practical business building initiatives you can implement today. Click here to download the flyer with dates and booking details.