We have created a partworks row in front of our counter at the entrance to our Forest Hill store. As with my last post, this says we are specialists. Each of these partworks has been or is being advertised on TV. Newsagents are the exclusive retail partner. By being bold about these products we are connecting our business with current TV campaigns and thereby leveraging the relevance that link brings.
We have created a small display around magazines with the SAVE MONEY! theme near our front lottery counter. Each title has been chosen because it offers practical advice on how to save money from budget meals through to cutting household costs.
Most of the titles rarely get to the front of the shop. None are are collectively displayed in this way. This display demonstrates that we understand that money is tight. It also pitches that we can help people save with ideas from various categories of magazines.
This display pitches us as a magazine specialist more so than a power end display for a single title.
The departure of ANF (Acting?) CEO Don MacAskill today is an opportunity for the ANF to regroup from what has been an unsuccessful three years. The mission to unify newsagents behind a single national body has failed, newsagents are quitting the ANF over its involvement in promoting newsagents into the now collapsed Bill Express contracts and suppliers appear less engaged with the ANF than ever.
I’d encourage the ANF Board to reclaim the organisation for the good of newsagents. Specifically, I would propose:
Newsagents are tired of the politics and are frustrated at the lack of face to face contact with those who represent them. Today’s events are an opportunity to reinvent national leadership for newsagents in pursuit of a strong future for our channel.
On the weekend I checked my Bill Express and Mobius equipment agreements and noticed that the document version markings, in fine print on the lower left corner of each page, matched. These common markings link the Bill Express and Mobius equipment finance agreements.
Much has been made about these agreements being separate. The ANF in its communication to newsagents makes it clear they view the agreements as separate. While I am no lawyer, I would have thought that a court would find it relevant to its considerations that agreements intended to be separate would have the same version markings.
The status of these agreements is of grave concern to newsagents across the country. It concerns me that not enough is being done by the ANF to address this situation.
We are promoting Famous at the counter at our Frankston newsagency this week. The free nail file / shiner is bound to drive a good sales result for this poor cousin of the weeklies. The photo shows the display we have created to support Famous – it’s a copy of the counter displays we have been doing at our Forest Hill store.
FYI, at Forest Hill we placed the Aussie Movie collection on display Friday morning. Between then and Sunday night we sold 14 copies off the counter display. That’s an extraordinary result for a title which had been out two weeks.
Scott Karp has written an excellent piece about what newspapers could learn from the General Motors decision to transform their business around producing a commercially viable electric car. The connection between the GM reinvention and newspapers is covered in this paragraph:
All the talk about “saving newspapers” is focused on finding new business models to keep doing what they’ve always done — which is like GM looking for a new business model to sell the kinds of cars they made in the 50s and 60s. What the newspaper industry, if it is to survive as such, must find is a radical new value proposition for news — something so audacious, so self-evidently valuable that, if they can find a way to deliver it, would lead to the rebirth of newspaper journalism.
The same could be said for newsagents. Our future is dependent on us finding new customers based on new products and services. It is based on us reinventing ourselves locally and nationally. This is what our industry associations ought to be thinking about and demonstrating leadership on. Developing, debating and creating The Newsagency of the Future is the most important mission newsagent associations could have. Unfortunately, I don’t hear anything from them about this.
Newsagencies should have a good range of pencil cases. Most don’t. While there are a couple of basic student pencil cases, few newsagents have a good range. The photo shows part of a new range we have found for our newsagencies. They are selling well, especially to girls. Their fashionable colours and designs make them an easy sell to this demographic.
More and more we are sourcing product from gift related suppliers as their stationery and related lines have greater consumer appeal than traditional newsagency stationery suppliers. Fashion can be more important than function to many stationery customers. hence the importance for us to have a broad and fashionable range in categories such as pencil cases.
A Victorian newsagent wrote to his bank a week ago seeking a refund of the funds taken from his account by Mobius for the Bill Express equipment. His letter sought the refund on the basis that the direct debit authority he signed for the Bill Express equipment was in favor of Technology Business International. Yesterday morning, checking his account, the newsagent found that his bank had refunded payments it has deducted without his authority since March this year.
This is a tremendous outcome. Good on the bank for realising that it did not have the right paperwork to allow such a withdrawal.
Charles Warner has written an excellent article at the Huffington Post about the disruption to old media thanks to new devices such as the iPhone. In plain language and without emotion, Warner’s article explains how the iPhone and other devices are turning the news, information and entertainment supply chains on their ears.
We are promoting The Flying Scotsman partwork in our model train category as well as the usual partwork space. With model magazines selling so well in our newsagency, co-locating The Flying Scotsman makes sense. Model magazine customers are loyal if you maintain a good range and make browsing easy. They are efficient too, often buying two or more magazines at once.
At Networked Knowledge Dr Robert N Moles publishes material about alleged serious miscarriages of justice. In one post, Contract Law Lecture, Moles writes about contracts and reasons for termination. In citing the case of Foley v. Classique Coaches Ltd, Moles writes:
A problem will arise if the machinery provided for in the contract breaks down for reasons over which the parties have no control. The traditional common law rule was that if the means for ascertaining the price failed, there could be no contract.
Newsagents entered in to a contract to finance equipment to operate the Bill Express and DialTime services, at the same time they entered into a separate contract for the provision of the Bill Express / DialTime services.
I am sure the legal experts representing newsagents are looking carefully at the status of the finance contracts given that the purpose of the machinery provided under the contracts contract has failed.
92 people voted in the poll about sub agents. 42 said NO, 32 said YES and 18 said as a RESTRICTED MEMBER.
Newsagents who feel strongly either way on this ought to put their thoughts to their associations as I know this is a topic being discussed at the moment. Associations cannot reflect the will of their members unless they are told what members want.
I ran the poll for two reasons:
Newsagents need to debate these issues as they go to the heart of what a newsagency may look like in the future.
I have been contacted by several newsagents in the last 24 hours about the role of the ANF in promoting Bill Express to new newsagents at the ANF run newsagents training course. In each case they say the ANF participated with Bill Express employees in promoting Bill Express to new newsagents. This included talking up the rebates. I am told there was no mention that the rebates could be removed at any timer.
One newsagent told me that they explicitly asked the ANF representative if the ANF had checked Bill Express out. The answer was they had and that it was a good deal. The ANF staffer did not disclose that they worked for an organisation which made a commission from its endorsement of Bill Express.
Keeping its own arrangement secret meant that newsagents did not have all relevant facts when considering the advice on the ANF on Bill express.
Some associated with the ANF put it about that I am obsessed with the organisation. This is not the case. I am concerned that the ANF did not disclose its own commercial relationship with Bill Express each time it promoted Bill Express to newsagents. I have put these and other issues to the organisation and it has not responded.
Mygazines.com offers a place where anyone can upload and read scanned pages of magazines, for free. This site is the napster of magazines, making available for free copyright protected material. It is very easy to use – to upload pages and to read content already there.
I’d expect magazine publishers to react to Mygazines in the same way record companies responded to napster.
The QNF has sent information to its members yesterday about the communication newsagents have received from Mobius Financial Services Pty. Limited about the Bill Express equipment. Below is the information provided by the QNF.
As convenor of the NSW newsagent’s class action, NANA has received the following advice which we have forwarded on to Qld Newsagents:
- You are NOT required to keep making payments to anyone in relation to the equipment rental.
- The Mobius FAQ sheet is seriously misleading, deceptive and misstates the position.
- The claims by Mobius FAQ and the letter that the equipment rental company has assigned its rights may or may not be correct, but it is impossible to tell from the documentation. What has been said raises more questions that it provides answers. The assignment claim should at this stage be regarded as irrelevant.
- The current advice states that participants of the class action NOT make payments; if you wish to participate please contact us on (07) 3862 7100
- As we have said previously, if any party attempts to bring recovery action against any of our participant newsagents, the group will bring proceedings to protect their position. We think it is very unlikely that this will be necessary. However, our solicitors are in regular contact with the receivers.
This advice contradicts advice provided by the ANF to newsagents late yesterday. Actually, the ANF did not provide advice, it called for expressions of interest in funding action around the equipment leases. Newsagents are angry that the ANF is asking for newsagents to fund action by the ANF given that the ANF earned in excess of $1 million in revenue in relation to the these agreements which are not set to be challenged. Newsagents I have spoken with would like the ANF to commit some of the $1 million plus it earned toward getting advice on this matter.
Page 2.2.1 of the Newsagent Manual published by the Australian Newsagents’ Federation and provided by the Association to new newsagents attending mandatory training is all about Bill Express. Here is some of what is in a manual provided by the ANF just over a year ago:
Bill EXPRESS is owned and managed by DialTime, an experienced technology company that forms part of the OnQ group of companies. DialTime is an expert in over-the-counter transaction systems and specializes in delivery of electronic pre-paid services to retailers.
The concept comes with a commercial package for newsagents and additional benefits available to Members of the Australian Newsagents’ Federation. Benefits to ANF members include:
- A new revenue source from bill payment.
- EFTPOS through ANZ at leading industry rates and zero debit card fee for any transaction volumes.
- Electronic pre-paid mobile phone and telecommunications product through DialTime.
- The option of a national advertising screen designed to increase sales.
- A comprehensive electronic retailing platform designed to evolve into the future.
- Additional financial benefits.
This ANF documentation further demonstrates the conflict of the industry association in representing newsagents and fulfilling their contractual obligations to Bill Express / DialTime.
We are promoting The Classic Australian Movie Collection partwork at the counter position usually reserved for magazines with a free gift. With this new partwork in its second on-sale week we wanted to attract as much interest into the weekend as possible. Also, we currently have no other title in-store with a giveaway which is appropriate to this premium space.
Sales for the movie collection have been good, it’s one of the best partworks going around at the moment – hence our decision to push part 1 ahead of the release of part 2.
I am grateful to the Comag Marketing Group for publishing this memo from Wal-Mart which calls for magazine supply quantities to be based on store level sales in the interests of the environment. Wal-Mart is reinventing itself around a strong position on environmental and sustainability questions.
To: All National Distributors and Publishers
From Christy Jenkins
Subject: Magazine Bottom Up Distribution
As many of you are aware Wal-Mart has a major Sustainability project underway to eliminate waste by improved efficiency. One of the projects we have focused on to assist in achieving our 50 efficiency goal is bottom up distribution. This process utilizes individual store specific sales information based on consumer demand to determine inventory needs by store which then rolls up to allotment needs by wholesaler to the DC level.
This project can only be successful if all parties throughout the channel support the initiative. Wholesaler allotments need to be adjusted to reflect our true needs not the prorated portion of copies printed. In the true spirit of sustainability we hope these copies would be completely eliminated from your print order and distribution channel.
Please support us and the environment as we move forward in this initiative.
While the Australian magazine supply model has improved considerably over the last two years, more needs to be done. We continue to be oversupplied by poor performing titles – titles with a sell through rate of lower than 50%. Until there is a financial penalty for such undersupply this practice, driven mainly by publishers, will continue.
One challenge with the launch of Grazia this week is finding space in the tightly packed women’s weeklies magazine display. We have created a new column by trimming the top two pockets of full waterfall displays. While some publishers may not be happy, it will not affect the sale of their products.
We will keep this space allocation for Grazia for four weeks before we allocate space based on revenue contribution. I suspect that this title will work better in two locations
The Guardian reports that News International is offering a free home delivery service for newspaper subscribers. The service is fulfilled by a third party provider. The article claims that a subscriber could save fifty pounds a year in delivery charges.
Newsagents in Melbourne ought to find time to get to C-Store 2008 at the exhibition centre today or tomorrow. Tower Systems has a stand and I was in there today to check out the event. C-Store is an excellent trade show for newsagents because it presents new product opportunities and better ways to merchandise traditional product.
With the convenience channel growing rapidly, it makes sense for newsagents to learn more about how it operates and to see good product offers.
My only surprise was that no magazine publisher or distributor was represented. Based on what I saw, coffee is the biggest push currently.
Due diligence in civil litigation (also known as due care) is the effort made by an ordinarily prudent or reasonable party to avoid harm to another party. Failure to make this effort may be considered negligence.
This is from the Wikipedia entry on due diligence. When newsagents saw the wholehearted endorsement of the ANF of Bill Express in the cover story of National Newsagent, the national magazine for newsagents published by the ANF, they reasonably expected that due diligence had been done on the offer being recommended to them.
Not once in the seven pages devoted to Bill Express in the May 2003 issue of National Newsagent were the commercial terms between the ANF and Bill Express disclosed. Nor in the two pages about Bill Express in National Newsagent in the June, July and August issues.
Talking to newsagents today about the ANF promotion of Bill Express, many say they understood the Bill Express offer to have been thoroughly researched by the ANF on behalf of newsagents. They thought the ANF had checked the complete offer to ensure it would not be harmful for newsagents.
I doubt that appropriate due diligence was undertaken. I have certainly not found any evidence of due diligence beyond questions about the agreement between the ANF and Bill Express.
This question of due diligence is important if newsagents are to get to resolution of the expensive mess left by the collapse of Bill Express. We know from documentation in the pblic domain that newsagent exposure is somewhere between $15 million and $20 million. For small family run businesses to be left with such debt from an offer brokered and promoted by an industry association for their own profit is unprecedented.
The problems newsagents have with the Bill Express related contracts today would have been exposed by thorough due diligence in 2003. The ANF could have easily made their agreement on commercial terms with Bill, Express contingent upon an acceptable and fair legal framework being approved for newsagents. From what I understand this requirement was not put by the Newsagents’ Association.
This is why newsagents are angry at the role of the ANF in the matter of Bill Express.
