A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Author: Mark Fletcher

Revising the counter offer

cal_candy.JPGWe have revised our counter offer at Forest Hill – introducing small magnetic day to a page calendars. This display has been in place for a week and is achieving good results. The high price and good margin make each calendar worth more than a candy bar. We have been careful in selecting the calendar titles to promote in this impulse position.

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Calendars

Flower Fairies partwork

flower_fairies.JPGNot to be left behind in partwork season, young girls are the target for Flower Fairies, a partwork collection of porcelain plates. Some of us in our newsagencies are not too sure how this one will go – but, then, we are not the target demographic. We have had it out for four days and sales are okay although the solar system partwork is doing better – the weekend will be the real test as it often is with partworks.

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partworks

Preparing for a quiet day

If tomorrow is like other AFL Grand Final days it will be busy until lunchtime and then dead.   While on most Saturdays trade is constant, on Grand Final Saturday the day is 85% over by lunchtime.  We have tried the day with the game on a big TV in-store.  We have also tried promotions to draw people in.  We have found we are better off using the quiet time to get work done.  With both teams from Melbourne we are sure to feel the impact more this year.

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retail

Pride at Women’s Weekly’s 75th

frank_aww_pride.JPGAustralian newsagents ought to feel tremendous pride at the success of Australian Women’s Weekly.  It was our channel which distributed and sole this title exclusively for decades.  Newsagents were key to the making the Weekly the success it was all those years ago and wile other retailers share tit title today, it was newsagent’s hard-yards which connected the title with consumers.

Remember, this grand of lady of publishing grew in a time without TV and mass electronic media advertising – the retail channel was crucial.  Newsagents actively promoted the title and nurtured loyalty around the masthead.

I bet there are people working in newsagencies today who remember fifty and even more years ago and the work newsagents did to support AWW.  These are real heroes for this title.  The displays we make this week and next in our stores ought to be a salute to the newsagents who made the title a success.

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magazines

The cost of home delivery

Posts here about newspaper distribution always attract plenty of comments from newsagents – usually around the same theme of the cost of the service versus the revenue. The challenge is that newsagents have contracts developed by publishers which control the model from start to end.

While some newsagents have handed back their runs, not enough have taken this step for publishers to be too worried. My feeling is that we are some way off a tipping point which would bring publishers to the negotiating table with fair offer. This is why I suggested a summit earlier this week. By taking the initiative, newsagents could set the agenda. The challenge is that industry associations, over the years, have not had the balls to take control of the relationship. I have heard industry association board members speak of the fear they feel of retribution if they work too hard for their members when talking to publishers.

Publishers are making money from newspapers, from advertising. They can afford to pay more. Newsagents need to find a way to negotiate around this.

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Newsagency challenges

Promoting phonecards in newsagencies

aussie_phonecard.JPGSherrie at our Frankston newsagency has created a fantastic display promoting the Aussie Phonecard. It is unusual for a phonecard to be promoted in store in this way – this is a trial we are conducting around the Aussie product – to find other ways to promote phonecards in newsagencies. The result of the trial will be new retailer kits for in-store displays. With a margin better than magazines and no inventory cost, it’s appropriate to give over the best in-store billboard space to promote this product.

A key component of the display is the DL size brochures which customers can take from the stand.

Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in the company behind the Aussie phonecard.

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phone recharge

Tattersalls flatters Intralot

monwedlotto.JPGThe collateral provided by Tattersalls to promote the new Monday and Wednesday games is a compliment to the cloud artwork used by Intralot to promote their games. Kudos to the two businesses for working together on a common image promoting lottery games – if that is what happened. Somehow, I suspect that they have not worked together on this and that the Tattersalls folk like the Intralot cloud style.

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Lotteries

Never too early for Christmas

sr_christmas.JPGWe have been slowly building the Christmas offer at or Sophie Randall stores over the last few weeks.  Sales tell us that late August is not too late to attract Christmas business in the right location.  I am not sure we could get away with this in a newsagency because of other demands on space and because of the difference in consumer habits in newsagency shopping compared to gift shop shopping.  The economic conditions make lay-by very appealing so we are promoting that for our Christmas range.

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retail

Gift Fair popular with newsagents

giftfair.JPGTower Systems yesterday completed its third Gift Fair trade show this year. What has been extraordinary to us is the number of newsagents now attending these events. Gifts is clearly one of the fastest growing categories in newsagencies – if the number of newsagents spending money at the trade show which ended yesterday in Sydney is anything to go by. This is great to see. Expanding into a new category such as gifts is vitally important for newsagents. There are new skills such as ranging, pricing and displaying to learn which are unique to the category. There is also the responsibility for firm sale ordering – with much of what newsagents sell out of their direct control, those playing in gifts will be well skilled for a good future.

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Gifts

Newsagent TV commercial delay

The TV commercial promoting newsagents which we are funding has been delayed in production. We did not factor in the time it would take to work on the images sent in and the production animation required to handle these according to our plans. We have seen three edits of the commercial so far and have felt that it was not where it needed to be. We are expecting to receive another edit late today.

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newsagency marketing

Government bail outs wrong

I have been thinking about the proposed bail out by the US Government to the tune of US$700 billion for banks and other institutions affected by the “global credit crisis”. It bothers me when I see any government writing big cheques for big business when individuals and small businesses do it tough thanks to circumstances not of their doing. The banks the US Government proposes to bail out actively participated in creating this problem.

I appreciate this may seem off topic. However, some of the challenges newsagents face are as a result of government regulation changes. While we have sought compensation for the government changing its mind, none was forthcoming. We did not ask for the regulation from decades earlier to change, we copped the consequences. We have moved on. If the Australian government joins the US giveaway then we have every right to be angry. Just as we have a right to be angry at the continued help to a bloated and inefficient car industry.

Why is it that governments so readily help the top end of town in these situations?

Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine has an excellent blog post on the US bailout.

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Blogging

Build your own Solar System

solar_system.JPGPartwork season rolled on this week with the release of the Build A Model Solar System partwork on Monday. This has launched in time for our local school holidays and is a week off in some other states. As we do with partworks, we have gone hard with a good display at the front of the shop – parents and grandparents will like something like this to make the holidays count for more than some fast food or a movie. We are certainly promoting the education value.

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partworks

Promoting Symply Too Good

symplytoogood.JPGWe have created a power-end display to promote Annette Sym’s Symply Too Good To Be True range at Forest Hill. Our goal is to drive sales of multiple books in each purchase. The display is directly in front of our cookbooks and health section – meaning it should connect with browsers. We picked up the marketing collateral at the newsXpress conference last week.

For newsagents new to Annette’s range, newsagents are the exclusive retailer and the books are available through Network Services.

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magazines

More Bill Express money returned

I received a call from another newsagent who has achieved a refund of three months of Bill Express equipment rental payments as a result of reading about it here.  This is great news.  While the status of the finance agreements is yet to be tested, any return of cash in the meantime has to be welcome.

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Bill Express

Renting magazines (part 2)

I have received some interesting calls in response to my blog post yesterday about renting magazines.  The post was meant to be more about getting us to think outside the traditional when it comes to our businesses.  I can think of many reasons renting magazines will not work just as I can think of reasons other innovative ideas will not work.  My interest in the post was more from the perspective of being open to exploring a radical idea for its is out of that process that other good ideas can spring.

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magazines

Newspaper home delivery summit

Given the number of newsagents who have handed back their home delivery runs this past year, newsagents and publishers ought to get together for a summit to discuss the situation.  Since the giving back is occurring more in regional NSW and QLD, the summit ought to be located in either area.

Publishers and representative newsagents ought to talk frankly about the problem, listening to each other and pursuing any idea, no matter how crazy, to chase an economically fair home delivery model.

Unless such newsagent / publisher  dialogue is engaged, more home delivery runs will be handed back without a plan.

My understanding is that for newsagents this is about money.  I was talking with several last week who handed back their runs because they were losing hundreds of dollars a week.  They had the financial data to support their claim.  They had approached the publisher in question to discuss operational costs and were ignored.  No one wins from a head in the sand approach to what is a real problem for regional newsagents.

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Newsagency challenges

Flattery in magazine design

lookalike.JPGWhile I am pleased to see the men’s health segment grow with the arrival of the Australian edition of Men’s Fitness, it is disappointing to see it’s cover look almost like clone of Men’s Health.  While there may be research indicating that this is a smart move, from a retail perspective I want to separate the two titles – so they will each be seen.  Together, they look the same and one or the other will be lost to browsers.

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magazines

Promoting Zoo Weekly

zoo_papers.JPGZoo Weekly is a feature magazine with the ACP Connections program this week.  Based on our past experience at Forest Hill, we have gone for a promotional display next to our main newspaper stand.  This leads to a better sales lift than a power end display – especially since we are chasing the irregular Zoo consumer who is probably visiting to purchase a newspaper.  Also, we have had complaints from some of our older customers when we display Zoo on a power end.

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magazines

Flipping the model, renting magazines

What if we were to rent magazines as well as selling them? People could pay by the day or week (for monthlies).  We could sell rental contracts in monthly (or longer) blocks.  They could rent by the title or by the total rental days regardless of title.

I appreciate the ideas may seem ridiculous.  Mull on it for a while and see what other ideas it ignites.

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magazines

Shredders sell easily

shredder_success.JPGThe shredders we brought in for Father’s Day (as part of the newsXpress offer) have sold easily, more easily than we expected. With stories about identity theft in the media, I guess it is no wonder people are happy to buy some protection. There is enough interest for newsagents to carry two or three models of shredders – to satisfy personal and small business needs. Shredders are a logical extension to the usual newsagent stationery offering – play in that space and you soon see more opportunities.

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Stationery

Free bag drives Healthy Food

fhn_healthy_food.JPGHealthy Food magazine comes with a sample bag worth $10.00 which we are featuring at the counter of our newsagencies. There is no point in making this display too pretty as it is all about the bag and magazine. If the bag works like last year we will be out in a couple of days.

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magazines

Ronnie Barker partwork sells well

ronnie_barkey.JPGThe Ronnie Barker partwork which was launched last week is selling well. What I noticed on Saturday is customers wanting to tell you their funny Ronnie Barker stories and their opinion of him compared to Ronnie Corbett. I put this down to the older demographic – when they shop they are looking for more than a quick financial transaction. We have this partwork on display next to the main lottery counter.

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partworks