Given our sales of new baby, christening and similar baby cards, it’s a no-brainer to have Baby’s First Christmas gifts as part of our Christmas gift story.
This display at the front of our newsagency is at the corner of the counter. The range covers a broad price spectrum and as such suits various budgets.
While we have bigger Christmas displays elsewhere, we have found it useful to also have smaller themed displays such as this.
We are promoting the latest issue of Holland Focus at the counter as it has Andre Rieu on the cover. We should sell out all 12 copies we received. Some of those will be Christmas gifts, this has arrived just in time. We are seeing plenty of magazines bought as Christmas gifts this year.
The counter promotion also reinforces our depth of range of magazines.
The We Like to Surf book is too big for us to sell. Way too big! In our magazine fixtures it takes three pockets. So, in addition to magazine KPIs around supply, return and shelf life we need to add product size and the definition of a magazine. While sure to be of interest to some of our customers, this book is too big for us.
The rep for these bright fluffy pens said they were selling well. Since this was a new relationship for us we trusted them and placed an order. A few weeks later we found the same product in a discount shop for what we paid the wholesaler. Ours are not selling and I doubt they would in any store buying from this wholesaler. The buy price is not good. Based on our experience, we are less likely to trust this rep.
Some diesel fumes must have leaked into the executive suite at Detroit Newspapers and driven the bosses mad. The decision-makers announced Tuesday that the daily newspaper reading habit was as dead at the domestic auto industry. I call it Motor City Madness.
Read the rest of the assessment here by John K. Hartman, professor of journalism at Central Michigan University, of the announcement this week to cut newspaper home delivery in Detroit.
While there is certainly robust criticism in newspaper circles globally, that the shift is happening puts home delivery onto the agenda – as if it was not already.
If I were a distribution newsagent I would be calling for a summit ASAP, in the next couple of weeks (not after summer) to look at the Detroit move from an Australia perspective. Such a newsagent only summit could also develop strategies around pursuing a fair return for home delivery effort.
Something has to hapen because those representing newsagents on this have failed for decades – up to an including last week. Use Detroit as a reason to come together and roll up the sleeves and decide what is best for newsagents and their families. Then pursue that with vigour.
The Border Mail / Age offer from Fairfax is churning newspaper home delivery customers from good margin business to discount business. This is not what these offers ought to be about, they should deliver incremental business. I have now seen evidence of the Border Mail / Age joint subscription offer converting a customer for no increase in delivered days but delivering less margin to the publisher and to the newsagent. Newsagents should not have to pay for publisher folly. I hope that the newsagents involved make complaints direct to the ACCC.
I visited the Whitcoulls store in Manukau yesterday and was most impressed with what I saw. The store layout, signage and ranging is excellent, far better than their Australian counterpart Supanews and better than what I have seen from Whitcoulls before. While Supanews and Whitcoulls operate in different markets I am surprised at the considerable difference in their retail offers. This Whitcoulls store looked corporate yet the service was very personal. Staff I noticed were knowledgeable and friendly.
If you subscribe to the New Zealand Herald for six months you get to choose a free six week subscription to New Zealand Listener or New Zealand Women’s Weekly. If you take a one year newspaper subscription you get to a twelve week magazine subscription. I like that this offer combines newspapers and magazines and is pitched as a Christmas gift. The twenty six week price is NZ$119.60 and the one year price is $239.20. I don’t know the NZ market well enough to comment on the financial value to the consumer or the cost to the distribution business.
At Auckland airport this afternoon I saw this in one of the newsstands – Great Moments in History. It’s a collection of New Zealand newspaper front pages. It’s a great Christmas gift which I am sure we could sell in Australian newsagencies. I’d certainly give it a crack at Christmas or for Father’s Day. It should be cheap to produce and therefore have a better margin than newspapers.
Circulation departments at Fairfax are confused about the company’s plans for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age over Christmas / New Year. People from Tower Systems have made eight calls to Fairfax in pursuit of consistent advice on their plans. The original advice supplied to newsagents indicated that there were several bumper editions for the SMH and The Age. Several Fairfaax circulation people we spoke with did not know anything about the plans.
The Tower Systems research has uncovered that there are no bumper editions – in the sense of what bumper editions have come to mean in Australia. The only change is a temporary price increase to the price of the Friday paper, to the Saturday paper price. This will lead to anger from both home delivery customer and full freight home delivery customer who will be forced to pay the higher price on the Friday.
Fairfax will complain about this blog post saying here I am criticising them unfairly again. The reality is that Fairfax had it is its capacity to resolve these issues through consistent professional advice provided weeks in advance of any change.
I heard about the sign before I read it. A staff member called out to a browser from behind the counter. No reading, look at the sign she barked. I looked up from across the aisle as did several others. Sure ,the sign was there. Two customers put down magazines and walked out, others muttered about customer service.
Browsing is important for magazine sales. Sure, there are people who abuse this. Many do not and end up buying magazines they have browsed. I don’t want any barriers between browsers and a purchase. Signs like the one in the photo turn people off.
The new Cardplai offer which is being launched exclusively to newsagents through our Tower Systems eziPass software is ready for newsagents to sign up in advance of the February 2009 launch. Go to their website to see the details. The Cardplai cards is exclusive to newsagents and launched with a solid advertising campaign promoting newsagents.
We are promoting the Aussie and Earlybird phonecards as Christmas gifts at each of our registers with this small sign. Giving someone conversations with family and friends overseas or interstate is a good gift. For the customer it is a different gift and easy to wrap. For us there is no stock cost and good margin. The artwork for these signs can be downloaded free here.
The photo shows the display browsers at our newsXpress Forest Hill store see as they leave our men’s magazines aisle.
This week we feature a Street Machine promotion. The stand is from ACP – the front is their basket builder – so we always promote ACP titles here. We are having good success using this as an aisle exit display – a last chance to buy display. If we move the magazine to another place we will choose titles based the type of customer most likely to walk past.
In the middle of the display is a shelf with product for easy purchase.
Thankfully, not all magazine publishers think the best gift to entice customers is an old copy of the same magazine. Right now on newsagent shelves we a good range of gifts available – sunglasses, a belt, a calendar, a bag, lipstick, a camping planner and, the best value gift of them all, a t-shirt. While the gifts are a challenge to display sometimes, they are an important part of the fix for the titles which carry them and for us. In our own stores we actively promote the gifts, as we should.
N-Stock, the VANA / ANF stationery business, is promoting 2GB USB Wrist Bracelets for $10.25 on a buy three and get your fourth for free deal. As one savvy newsagent emailed me – you can find 4GB USB Wrist Bracelets for $5.90 retail. Associations have no role in running a stationery business. VANA should not have gone into this business using member funds without member approval. This latest offer is proof of why buying should be left to professionals.
The credibility of VANA and the ANF in representing newsagents to suppliers on matters of price are compromised by this evidence of their lack of commercial skill.
I know this blog post will frustrate Directors of VANA and the ANF. If they had stuck with running their respective associations as associations then the problem I have described would not exist. Their decision to go into this N-Stock stationery business is what has caused the problem here, not me.
We have done good business these past couple of weeks in teacher gifts – desk calendars, photo frames, figurines, books and charms. These gifts along with cards have sold well. The photo shows one of the desk calendars we carry and a beautifully packaged glass apple – ideal for a female teacher. While the end of the school year is not as big as the start, it is a nice boost since not many retailers play well in this space. I like that a teacher gifts promotion combines departments.
Drift Central fails in our newsagency. It has done for the last two years. Not one copy sold. The distributor continues sending stock. No wonder newsagents throw their hands up in the air and scream sometimes. The cash and space Drift Central takes reduces cash and space for more profitable activity in my newsagency and, I am sure, hundreds of others. The sooner we collectively flex our muscles on magazines like this the better.
The reports of a change in home delivery arrangements for two newspapers in detroit have proved to be accurate. The Detroit News overnight announced details of their new newspaper home delivery model. I say this is a seismic shift because it will result in more newspaper publishers thinking outside the square. For example, if it works in detroit (or even looks like it might work) others will follow.
The US home delivery model is quite different to here. Publishers carry considerably more of the costs and penetration (efficiency) is not as good as we see in Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide – three strong cities for home delivery. That said, I am sure that bean counters within newspaper publishers are watching the action in Detroit intently.
Home delivery of newspapers has a high cost. Just ask most newsagents who receive no clip from advertising. Now is the time for people representing newsagents to be on the front foot, considering Detroit and other models which may be more appropriate for newsagents and publishers in providing a home delivery service.
Click on the photo to see a larger version of an experimental wall of Hallmark packaging options. While still a work in progress, the customer reaction we have seen is positive, especially with purchases of wrap or a bag and other wrap related items.
Gift packaging, like everything in retail, needs to keep changing if we are to break through store blindness. Newsagents have a much lower share of gift packaging sales than we have of greeting card sales. This is, in part, due to poor location and poor display. This wall, at the front of the shop and as a lead in to the card department is boosting sales.
Like all good fixturing today, the wall can be easily reconfigured both for current use and to handle other product categories.
The QNF has warned newsagents who have ceased paying their ANF membership fees to write a resignation letter to the ANF. They published this advice after finding around twenty newsagents who had stopped paying thinking that was all they had to do to resign. The QNF has advised newsagents that the ANF may charge non financial members for the period until they receive their resignation in writing. By resigning, the ANF will have a more accurate membership base and therefore be better able to quaote accurate representation numbers to companies they pitch to and government bodies they engage with.
It will be good to see the last of this awful old wave style wall of magazines at our Frankston newsagency. It treats product poorly and does not offer the flexibility necessary in modern retailing. Unfortunately, some shopfitters think the old wave wall still represents good design. I have seen plans recently which included one of these wave walls. The better alternative is slatwall or some other frame system into which flexible magazine fixturing can be clipped – and moved as time requires. While they may look attractive when stocked with fresh stock, after a couple of days in an air conditioned environment gravity makes the products look shabby.
I am often asked about magazines we carry and how they are laid out in our magazine department. I have put together a slide show of photos taken insequence down each of our magazine aisles.
We have magazines elsewhere in the shop as well as feature displays. The photos in this slide show only cover the core magazine department.
