Author: Mark Fletcher

Newsagents should read the report in The Age today about the closure of the Kleins jewellery group corporate stores and the re-branding of franchise stores. Philip Hopkins’ interview with Administrator James Stewart of Ferrier Hodgson is telling:

Mr Stewart said Kleins had failed to stay relevant to its market and customers. Its stock was not fresh.

My question is how relevant are newsagencies? Not how relevant do we think we are but how relevant are we? Consumer research data by at least one major supplier to newsagents suggests that our relevance in the minds of consumers is fading with time.

“In the past few years, new competitors such as Diva and Groove have appeared,” he said. The changing dynamics were reflected in the companies’ respective websites.

“Diva’s website offered a more sexy vision than Kleins’.”

Most newsagents don’t have any web presence. The YourNewsagent website is an excellent initiative for newsagents to at least get a basic web presence up and running. The Find It free online classifieds business for newsagents project I launched a couple of years ago failed to attract interest from more than 30 active newsagents. Newsagents need to understand the need to be online before it is too late. Once there, they need to be relevant and to evolve – in a way that Kleins did not.

Stewart’s comment about stock in most interesting for newsagents to consider. How fresh is our stock, especially our stationery? I know from data I see that many newsagencies have stock which is years old. In today’s market, stock which is six months old is too old.

I spent most of yesterday on King Island, a small island to the north of Tasmania, population 1,600 (and 6,000 cows) and home to the famous King Island Dairy. The photo is of the newsagency in Currie, the main town on King Island. Unfortunately it was closed by the time our group arrived but peering inside I could see it had the usual range of greeting cards, magazines, newspapers and stationery. It also had the tourist items you’d expect and local event notices on the door. Lottery products are sold out of the supermarket.

Walking towards the newsagency across from the street I was surprised that the only branding was the N newsagent logo. This logo was created by the NSW Newsagents Association (NANA) in the 1990s and taken over by the ANF association and rolled out nationally. The ANF launched a new logo at the convention on the Gold Coast two weeks ago – although I am not sure who will fund the roll out of the new logo.

But back to King Island, taking a look at most of the other of the retail businesses in Currie, the newsagency fits in. While they could go with bolder branding like the local IGA supermarket, the market size does not warrant this – Currie has a population of 900. It’s retail businesses are appropriately understated – business is more about the community than it is about the business. and the newsagents clearly fits in.

This newsagency is a good example of where national generic and or low cost retail branding is appropriate for a newsagency.