While we are not fans of spinners, two of our team at Forest Hill could not pass up this stand which they found at a dumpster. The stand is in excellent condition. It helps us resolve a Christmas space issue and provides welcome flexibility. The deep shelves allow us to efficiently display a range of items we want to promote away from our traditional gift display.
Dumpster diving can be rewarding – it’s certainly good for the environment.
Some gifts are a challenge to display. Take this pack of adult magazines. It would offend many customers to make a feature of the offer so we rely on prospects finding it in the adult section of our magazine display. The challenge is that in traditional magazine fixturing the details of the offer are lost. That said, at least they have gone to some effort to create the gift pack.
We have extended the reach of Christmas gifts beyond our dance floor into the magazine and stationery areas of the business. We have a selection of our range on display on what is usually a magazine power end for us. We are compensating by promoting Christmas magazines at the front of the shop in another display. This Christmas gifts display has been up for more than a week and sales are good. Each of the items has been selected to be an easy (impulse) decision. We did this knowing that people were not visiting our newsagency looking for gifts – we are not well established in that category yet.
BBC Magazines launched Lonely Planet magazines last week in the UK. It will be interesting to see if this joins other BBC megabrands such as Top Gear and Good Food and pursues an Australian edition – the BBC took control of Lonely Planet last year. The launch of the Australian edition of Top Gear has brought welcome interest to the motoring category. Th travel magazine category could do with some help.
Two rival UK publishers have complained that the publicly funded BBC is unfairly using its government ownership against competitors. The Press Gazette has more on this. This is not dissimilar to my argument about Government owned Australia Post shops here in Australia.
I have decided to benchmark November 2008 against November 2007 to check the health of the newsagency channel. Tower Newsagents can participate by sending a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box to get a category breakdown. Set your first date range (on the left) to November 1, 2008 to November 30, 2008 and the date range of the right to one year earlier. Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au.
I’d like to complete the benchmark by the end of the week so the sooner I receive data the better.
Newsagents not using Tower software wishing to participate should email me if they would like a spreadsheet template to complete.
I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.
News Magazines announced today that they are not proceeding with the local edition of Glamour magazine. While rival publishers will be relieved, the competition which would have surrounded the launch will be missed. It is challenge to keep the magazine offer fresh and new title launches help in this.
These Vintage Traditions sachets are a good reminder of the theatre of retail. Customers are drawn to their smell and some soon make the $2.50 purchase. While our newsagencies are visually very noisy, smell wise they are quiet. This product has the smell senses all to themselves. Maybe that is why the range has been so successful for us in just a few short days. We have it displayed with our range of boxed Christmas cards so there should be some flow on sales as a result.
I like the mini cookbook offer with New Idea this week. While there is something else to manage when selling the magazine, I like that provides us with a compact promotion at the counter. With so many magazines on the shelves at the moment with something stuck on the cover, it is good to see a different approach. Smart newsagents will treat this as the bonus gift, a surprise for customers buying New Idea.
The January issue of FHM magazine which came out today has a double page ad promoting newsagencies. ACP Magazines is graciously running the ad without cost. This ad connects to the TV commercial I funded and the ad ACP has already run in TV Week. My creative team at Tower Systems has developed the artwork. You’ll see a broad range of newsagencies and brands represented.
Maybe, one day, newsagent associations will get behind this initiative.
2009 is shaping up as a defining year for newsagents. Besides the disruption caused mobile devices and the Internet and the challenges brought about by the so-called Global Economic Crisis, our channel faces considerable structural change as several key suppliers introduce changes to drive efficiencies for their businesses.
I am fortunate to have be a participant in briefings by several suppliers across different product categories in newsagencies. While I cannot share details of specific briefings, I can say that in 2009 more than ever before newsagent compliance around key business practices across multiple departments will be crucial.
While we can be frustrated that compliance is used by some as a stick, there are smart suppliers who will use it as a carrot. From what I have seen, most of the new compliance regimes in 2009 will be good for individual businesses.
Achieving compliance requires support from all stakeholders – the suppliers, your employees and the providers of any tools such as newsagency software. It is the area of software which has given me a seat at the table in various briefings over the last six weeks.
At these meetings I have robustly represented that newsagents need to gain as much as suppliers stand to gain from mutual compliance. Whether suppliers have listened remains to be seen.
2009 will be a tough year for our channel. The bar will be raised. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Natural Selection will be evident.
Newsagents can best prepare by reviewing the efficiency of their business inside out. There is less room for wastage, mistakes and ignorance than ever before.
Amazon is running a massive magazine subscription sale for US published titles for delivery in the US. For example, GQ – $1.00 an issue, Vanity Fair – $1.25 an issue, Marie Claire 62 cents an issue. Click here to see the deals. This is tough competition for magazine retailers in the US.
Editors weblog has published an excellent two part report by Jan Bierhoff, Director for the European Centre For Digital Communications, on the future of e-readers and their possible impact on print media. Click here for part one and here for part two. Bierhoff’s conclusion will comfort some:
The conclusion is obvious, the adoption potential for mobile electronic reading is certainly high, but it is a medium in its own right, not just another print or online edition spin-off.
I agree, electronic devices for reading newspapers and magazines such as the iPhone, Kindle and the long awaited e-paper models are of a medium separate to print. The question to which we will only discover an answer over quite some time is the number of print consumers who migrate.
From a newsagents perspective, my view is that we need to read widely on this issue of disruption. It goes to the heart of how we design our shops for the future, how we stock them and the control we assert over our businesses.
Sam, a Sydney taxi driver, delivered one of the most amazing customer service experiences I have ever had. Yes, a Sydney taxi driver!
Sam, I don’t know his surname, has been driving taxis for nine months. Prior to that he owned a couple of Italian restaurants and had worked in hospitality in Sydney for thirty years.
I met Sam at around 9:30pm Thursday night when I had to catch a cab from Sydney airport back to the city when I had left my laptop at my hotel. This caused me to miss my flight. While I will not bore you with the details, because of Sam I picked up the laptop and made it on a flight to Melbourne, overcoming airline and other obstacles along the way.
Sam made it happen. Just when had resolved to staying the night in Sydney and catching a 6am to Melbourne Friday, Sam made it work out.
I don’t usually talk to taxi drivers. Nothing against them it’s just that when I travel I stay in my own world. Sam made that difficult. The moment I slid into the passenger’s seat next to him he turned and with a big grin said help and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Sam, welcome to my taxi”.
It was such a different experience to what I experience from the hundreds of taxi rides I take each year that it was a shock. With his greeting Sam set the mood and that was key to resolving the challenges of getting getting to the city, collecting my laptop, getting back to the airport and making a flight I had no booking for.
The experience with Sam was the kind of experience I am sure all newsagents crave to have delivered across the counter in their shops with every transaction. In our 40 minutes together Sam got to the heart of good customer service based on his years in hospitality:
Sam made it clear that by living by these rules we was able to find for himself the life he wanted. I have Sam’s number and will call when I next need a taxi in Sydney.
I am undecided about the increased number of compact size magazines we are receiving with their full size parents. Traditional newsagent magazine fixturing is not designed to cope with these yet I can understand that some customers would prefer the smaller size. Beyond the display challenge, which can be fixed with a block of wood, there is the stock issue. When a title introduces a compact version we are often supplier close to double the usual supply until the sales level for the store is reached. Newsagents fund this until the level is found.
I wold like to see us agree terms for new titles and title extensions such as is happening at the moment with Cleo and its compact edition. Bill us once you know what we have sold and not in advance. the technology can handle this easily. It places responsibility appropriately with the publisher for the launch.
Network Services, the distributor handling Cleo, aggressively chases payments on the 20th of each month from newsagents for everything supplied for the month prior. They pursue payment more aggressively than any other newsagent supplier. With some of this money due to titles still being tested in the marketplace, a fairer approach would be for more flexible terms around these titles. The current arrangement sees small business newsagents unfairly funding this testing.
newsXpress has provided its members with copies of this double sided A2 poster to promote the 2009 Calendar range. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image. The idea behind the poster is to promote range. With most newsagents only selling magazine distributor and card company calendars, the newsXpress approach allows us to promote a key point of difference in the calendar category. With a margin of 60% and more, such promotion is valuable.
A newsagent in country Victoria has let a casual employee go last week following the replacement of their computer software. The different approach to magazine returns and stock management in the business resulted in sufficient efficiencies to eliminate the role altogether.
While this sounds like an ad for Tower Systems, the software company I own, I have been thinking more about the focus of the newsagent to achieve genuine benefits from investments like in software. Too often, I see newsagents do something which saves time only to not use the saved time to their personal or financial advantage. There is no point pursuing efficiency if you are not going to make it count for your business.
This country Victorian newsagent is now a couple of hundred dollars a week better off because they wanted what the sales pitch said could be achieved. They did this themselves. Sure they were trained, but the achievement is theirs and kudos to them for that. They have done more than many newsagents who don’t make computer systems and other infrastructure investments in their businesses pay off what they promise.
I can arrange contact details or anyone who wants to verify the story about the time saved by the switch and the decision to let the employee go.
Trent Shields, National Marketing Manager at newsXpress, and Leighton Dougall, Software Developer at Tower Systems are supporting Movember and raising awareness for men’s health issues including prostate cancer and depression by raising funds and growing a goatee (see photo of Trent). I am sure others in the newsagency channel are supporting Movember too. If you know of anyone please post a comment. We have two days to raise more awareness and cash for Beyond Blue and the prostate Cancer Foundation. Go to Trent’s page or to Leighton’s page on the Movember website to support the cause.
Steven Denham reports at his Village Counter Talk Blog about presenting to suppliers his learnings from the launch in September of the Magazine Club Card loyalty program in his shop in the UK.
The success for Steve and his team since September is excellent:
We have given out nearly 400 cards up to now with a good number of customers on to their second or third. We have one customer who has claimed 6 free magazine so has bought more than 66 in the past 12 weeks. We need to reward this type of customer as they are the backbone of our business.
It is good to see from Steve’s blog that suppliers engaging on this initiative. Given the win for them such engagement is important. This is a newsagent initiative which they could drive for the success of the most important channel to magazine sales in the UK and here in Australia.
Rewarding consumer loyalty around magazine purchases through the Magazine Club Card is all about enticing increasing sales. The keys are genuine and attainable reward and the promotion of the offer only by word of mouth across the counter.
In our own experience over the four and a half years we have run this program, the increase in magazine sales comes at a cost to other magazine retailers as well as from genuinely new business.
It is rare that we see this marketing initiative fail.
The photo is of the 60cm free standing Christmas sign we have created to take the Christmas pitch onto product shelves in our Sophie Randall business. At Sophie, the retail experience is different to a newsagency, shopping is more relaxed. It is a bit of a treasure hunt experience. While our windows are professionally dressed, into the shops the products themselves promote the season. We found with Father’s Day that signs this size successfully promoted the season deep into the store. We feel that the more traditional A2 posters hanging from the ceiling are not right for us. Our free standing Christmas signs have cost us $12.00 each.
The Hannah Montana and High School Musical stationery and calendars from Hallmark have hit at a good time. They fit nicely into the Christmas and trade on the back of excellent recent publicity. The products also serve a demographic for our traditional shoppers shop. While taking offers such as these from Hallmark and other suppliers can be financially challenging, they are important since they sow the business moving outside of traditional seasonal offers. Not all licenced product works this well – you have to weigh the market carefully.
Below is the poster artwork I have had created for newsagents to use to promote magazines as a Christmas gift. You can download the artwork – A4 or A3 size – from the front page of Tower website. I have kept away from all newsagency branding – so that any newsagent could use the poster.
I selected the titles to represent range and typical gift giving opportunities. The challenge is space since it was important to represent enough of the cover. Newsagents are welcome share this with colleagues if they feel it would be useful in driving magazine sales as Christmas gifts.
We received Chess Life Magazine today for the first time from NDD, two copies. The price is $9.95. The US price is $3.95. This title has a sixty day on sale. We don’t sell any chess magazines. We don’t have any titles with which this could be placed except for, maybe, poker or hobbies. Had I been given the opportunity to decide for myself about this title I wold have considered what else I could get to create a story – but not right now, I would have given the title as crack in the new year when there is more time, space and cash. Not giving newsagents such a choice means that this title will be treated respectfully – it’s fuel for the magazine distribution machine.
But back to the numbers for Chess Life. I need to sell the two copies in 30 days to break even. To do this I have to invest more time to manage the title. For a single title it is not worth it – which brings me back to wanting to manage the broader opportunity for other titles which could fit with this.
If NDD wants to cut a deal to bring in Chess Life they need to carry the risk. The current magazine supply model makes ittoo easy for fringe titles like this to be placed with us.
We started promoting the Australian Women’s Weekly at the counter on Wednesday. The free movie with each copy and that it is a bumper Christmas edition make for a compelling offer. Sales have been excellent over the last two and a half days – sales for AWW in both my stores have been good the last few months with a sell through of close to 90%. We are achieving this by consistently promoting the title in additional locations including this premium counter position. This counter location will work better for us with AWW than a power end as it is seen by more customers who are already committed to spending money with us.
We do not have The Form for customers of The Age because our supplier refused to fair terms. He is paid ten cents by Fairfax. Given that we would supply his home delivery customers as well as our retail customers and provide premium space for the product we considered that the ten cents should be fully passed on. Rather than any negotiation, we have no stock. This is a challenge for newspaper publishers who want a retail presence but rely on distribution businesses to negotiate on their behalf.