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

Author: Mark Fletcher

Questions about Bill Express

The anger of newsagents about the Bill Express mess continues to grow. If what I hear, more groups are forming looking at legal action and more individual newsagents are seeking their own legal advice.

While some are focusing on the agreements newsagents signed, others are focusing on representations made which guided newsagents to sign these agreements. It is this latter focus which is interesting but more complex to consider.

Newsagents preparing to seek advice could benefit from:

  1. Gathering all documentation they have about Bill Express: Agreements, brochures, magazines with articles about Bill Express, letters, file notes and records of phone calls. For example, if you relied on the information in any Express Shop Update such as Issue 3 on July 14 which stated explicitly on page 3 that the $210 a month national advertising screen rebate is a “guaranteed commitment”.
  2. Recalling and recording details of Bill Express related events attended: who invited you, how, what did they say to invite you. Who spoke at the meeting and what did they say.
  3. Recalling and recording details of any other information and or advice upon which you relied in making your decision to go with Bill Express.

Who said what and when in encouraging your decision top commit to Bill Express could be considered of interest by your legal adviser if the information on which you relied has subsequently turned out to be false or misleading.

Newsagents need to present all possible information to those advising them through the current Bill Express issues. Too narrow a focus could result in a missed opportunity.

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Bill Express

Early art sale

artsale_june08.JPGWe have gone out with an art sale – a couple of weeks earlier than planned because we have space on our “dance floor” calendar.

This is the first time we have promoted our new range at the front of the shop and in the 48 hours since it was put up interest has been good. Change in retail, any change, is good – regulars find products they did not know you have and new customers are drawn to your business.

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art supplies

A&R to buy Borders?

If CNN Money (and a bunch of other news services) is right, A&R Whitcoulls, the business owned by Pacific Equity Partners and which owns Supanews, is set to acquire the the Borders Australian, New Zealand and Singaporean businesses.  The implications of this move for newsagents is significant and I am sure will be felt for years to come.

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Book retailing

Good Health magazine at the counter

We have put Good Health at the front counter with its free

fhn_ghealth.JPG

Now we hav this counter space well settled promoting titles with a good giveaway and with more titles to promote, we are looking for additional display opportunities which will work as well.

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magazines

The good and bad of lottery change

ilot1.JPGNo sooner had Intralot installed the equipment for their new lottery offer to launch July 1 and Tattersalls were in telling us that Intralot cannot have access to any of their space. If we do what Tattersalls want we will have to reduce our counter space by 30%. This is despite Tattersalls having less product than previously. I sure hope that commonsense prevails. Tattersalls is more concerned about rules than commercial outcomes. We give them tremendous coverage outside their area and this drives sales but they don’t care. All they are worried about is Intralot getting some of their space.  We could follow their rules and, at the same time, stop our extra promotion, they’d lose at least 20% of our sales.  Sure we would suffer but Tattersalls would be happy.  Tattersalls ought to treat this as a business decision and treat us as business people.

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Lotteries

A waste of paper

pc_user_review.JPGThe special edition of PC User – Year’s Best Reviews is a waste of paper.  In many cases, the reviews were out of date when they were first printed.  This reprint collection is even more out of date.  People interested in computer reviews are m ore likely to access reviews online in forums and blogs than buying this magazine.

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magazines

Starting over

Oh well, Powerball went off.  First division reached $58 million.  That’s some prize.  next week it will be winter between-season retail as usual.  While the OzLotto lottery has jackpotted to $13 million, it’s not enought to generate much interest.

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Lotteries

The Powerball jackpot hope

I hope that Powerball does not go off tonight. I know that we should want a winner and cheer if that happens but selfishly, another jackpot would be wonderful. The first division prize would reach at least $60 million and possibly as much as $70 million.

A $70 million division one prize would drive newsagencies and other lottery outlets nuts in the next week -good nuts that is.

While I am thrilled with the sales kick this week, another week or two would be fantastic – we are between seasons after all. With Mother’s Day a distant memory, the next major retail activity will be around school holidays and mid year sales. So, the Powerball jackpot is hitting at an excellent time for us. The add-on sales are excellent. Every department in the business is buzzing. Newspaper publishers, magazine publishers, greeting card publishers and other suppliers to newsagents should see a positive impact in their numbers.

Yes, I hope that Powerball does not go off tonight.

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Lotteries

Powerball magazine promotion

powerball_magazines.JPGThe photo shows the magazine display our team created next to one of our lottery counters at the front of our newsagency.

Each of the magazines connects with the dream and aspirations of winning the $50 million Powerball jackpot.  BRW Rich 200, Wealth, Vacations, Airliner, Mercedes etc.

The jackpot is a good opportunity to show titles which would otherwise not make it to the front of our shop.  I’m not sure what magazines we will display if Powerball does not go off and it jackpots.

We’ll take any tie-in opportunity like this since other magazine retailers – supermarkets and convenience stores – do the bare minimum.

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magazines

Madonna and SJP and magazine retailing

faces_magazines.JPGWith Madonna on the cover of Vanity Fair and Elle and Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of Cosmopolitan and Mindfood, it makes sense to place the titles together. This way, fans of the star on the cover are encouraged to buy both titles. Changing magazine placement based on the cover as we have done in the photo is retail 101. The editors choose the stars because of their pulling power right now. We’d be silly to not leverage that for all it is worth. A salable star is more important than the masthead under which they appear.

With the new sex In the City film starting Thursday we are expecting to need a Sarah Jessica Parker section.

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magazines

The Monthly’s covers

monthly_turnbull.JPGThe Monthly has a track record for successful tips fro recent covers:  Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama, John Howard (exiting) Maxine McKew.  The latest issue has Malcolm Turnbull on the cover.  I wonder if the tradition continues.  Sales wise, The Monthly is traveling well.  Recent audit results show it is a rapidly growing title.  We leverage that by pl;acing it above The Age for the first week of on-sale.

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magazines

Vogue India a hit

vogue_india.JPGWe decided to add Vogue India to our range of Vogue titles and received our first stock yesterday.  We have one left out of three copies of the current issue.  I’m happy with that and we still four weeks of the on-sale left.

We are working at carefully expanding our magazine range around the categories which we see working – hence the decision to take on Vogue India.   We see ourselves as a magazine specialist.,  If we are to be true to this self applied label we have to constantly expand our range.  I hope all our moves work as well as Vogue India.

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magazines

International Father’s Day

ifather.JPGWe are promoting International Father’s Day. It is one of the many ‘minor’ seasons to which we are committed to as a greeting card specialist. Wikipedia has an excellent list of when Father’s Day occurs around the world – the list of countries noted to celebrate on the third Sunday in June is considerable.

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Greeting Cards

Geelong Bride and the newsagent / publisher relationship

bride_geelong.JPGI was in Geelong last night speaking at a newsagent group meeting, sharing strategies for growing magazine sales. The meeting was held at the offices of the Geelong Advertiser. I was impressed with the relationship between the Geelong area newsagents and the Geelong Advertiser. There is clear healthy mutual respect. While the Advertiser does not have a monopoly on such a relation ship with newsagents, it is rare.

Demonstrating the value of the good relationship was Circulation Director Geoff Smith’s pitch about the Advertiser’s Bride magazine. Newsagent commission is 45%. There are reasons for this which Geoff explained. Where other publishers would have understood reasons to pay a premium, they would have stuck with 25% believing that newsagents would complain but do nothing.

The mutual respect in Geelong sees a win win – the publisher hs Bride magazine well represented in the area and newsagents have an opportunity to make additional margin.

I’d like to see newsagents somehow share information among themselves, across regions, about their publisher relationships. I see this encouraging those less fortunate to approach their publisher relationship is a more proactive way and, hopefully, unlock the value I see being experienced in Geelong. As I understand it, several newsagents have nurtured this relationship with the Advertiser. Doing this outside of a more formal Association push might be more useful.

Better relationships with publishers are more likely in regional and rural areas because the mutual dependence is stronger. That said, some newsagents have bee able to leverage good relationships with capital city publishers – but not enough.

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magazines

Bill Express to do a Lazarus?

A report on Page 62 of today’s Australian Financial Review suggests that the company is close to sorting its woes out. I am interested that the key quotes from Ian Christiansen, CEO of Bill Express, relate to newsagents and that the company compensates us for non performance. Hmm, Bill Express established the terms around which it acquired newsagent locations and it was through these terms that it trained newsagents on the compensation model for taking the Bill Express equipment.

The AFR article tales about possible legal action by newsagents against Bill Express. I am aware of five groups of newsagents working with lawyers and at least another fifteen working individually with lawyers. I’d expect ASIC, the ACCC, the NSW CTTT and several other statutory bodies to be looking closely at Bill Express and, in particular, how newsagents were recruited.

Mobile phone recharge is the largest volume product category sold in newsagencies through the Bill Express equipment. I’d expect that the troubles of the company over the last two months have resulted in a considerable fall in mobile recharge revenue. Many newsagents have gone elsewhere – to ePay, banks and our own eziPass – regardless of the continuing cost of their Bill Express equipment.

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Bill Express

Mobile recharge marketing collateral

recharge_here.JPGNot much has changed in marketing collateral around mobile phone recharge in newsagencies for years. I see this as a barrier to newsagents achieving better growth from the category.

As with any offer pitched in a retail environment, change is essential. This is even more true in the visually noisy environment of a newsasgency.

To support the ezipass platform in newsagencies, we have started developing several collateral options. Th photo shows one prototype for which we hope to get carrier approval from Telstra, 3 mobile and Virgin mobile. It is a “wobbler” which connects to the back of a register or some other hardware in a high traffic area.

We have four quite diffrent collateral strategies in development and eachhas several execution options. The whole kit, if we roll it out, will bring regular change to how newsagents promote mobile recharge and, we hope, result in a considerable lift in sales.

We are fortunate to have a marketing team in-house creating this and other material.

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phone recharge

Trading Post death throes

tp_may08.JPGThe wraparound cover of the Melbourne edition of the Trading Post newspaper is a reflection on the health (or otherwise) of the print publication. It is a four page pitch to buy and sell online, nothing about print.

I guess their decision to partner with Australia Post over newsagents to do their 100 point check for online traders ought to have demonstrated their disconnect with print and the print distribution channel.

I checked our sales and the sales in several other newsagencies last night – the Trading Post is shedding retail sales fast, faster than any other daily or weekly newspaper from what I can see. In one newsagency, sales are down 33% year on year looking at the January to May data.

If I were them I would be pushing people online too. However, I’d do it in partnership with newsagents rather than abusing them.

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Newsagency challenges

Bill Payment growth is a surprise

I am surprised at the 34% increase in bills paid in our newsagency using Bill Express in May 2008 compared to May 2007 given the poor health of the Bill Express company. Bill payment continues to be less efficient than I would like with most sales not including any other product.

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Bill Express

Leveraging newspapers

fhm_papers.JPGFHM will work better out of this recycled magazine stand next to our main newspaper stand than if we created a power end display.  We know from the success of ZOO and Alpha on the other side of the newspaper stand than popular male titles near newspapers work.  Hence the placement of the stand.  In return for leeching off the newspapers like this we have a second at the front of the shop, near our lottery counter.

It is important that suppliers allow us to break their rules in pursuit of better sales.

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magazines

House and Garden promotion

house_garden.JPGHouse and Garden magazine takes pride of place at the counter this week thanks to the free photo album which comes with the title. The display is not as ‘clean’ this week thanks to the $50 million Powerball jackpot. Nevertheless, I expect it to do as well as other titles we promote in this space with a free giveaway. The giveaway is key – its value has to be quickly identifiable.

I’d expect to sell more House and Garden off this space than the power end we did last week as part of our ACP commitment.

Girlfriend last week did well in this space, proving its usefulness with a younger demographic to what we traditionally target here.

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magazines

$50 to win $50 million

We are taking a great idea from a newsXpress colleague and creating a pack of Powerball tickets.  For $50 our customers will get several goes at the $50 million jackpot.  Based on a trial on the weekend it will work a treat.  Creating products like this around jackpots is a great way to make the most of the biggest lottery prize ever opportunity.

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Lotteries

Australia Post pushing Reflex

apo_reflex.JPGThe buying power of the Government owned Australia Post retail network is in plain view with their current offer of reflex for $4.95 a ream. While Big W and other retailers offer reflex for this price from time to time, only Australia Post pulls consumers in for such a low cost – thanks to their postal products monopoly.

This is where they abuse the protection of Government ownership. The Government owned Post Office opposite my newsagency ought not be competing with me in stationery – a sentiment shared with many newsagents in my situation.

UPDATE: I am reliably informed that Licenced Post Offices buy Reflex for $4.82 including GST.  Not happy I suspect.

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Australia Post

Bill Express and the direct debit

Given the mess of Bill Express and the removal of subsidies paid to newsagents by the company, some newsagents are taking steps to cancel direct debit arrangements for payment of the old Bill Express equipment. Without commenting on the appropriateness of such a step, I am grateful to a colleague who pointed me to advice on how to do this and a sample letter which could be used. An ACCC bulletin from 2002 also has some interesting comments to make about this.

Newsagents need to consider carefully the action they take. The direct debit is the monthly pain of the failing Bill Express service. The bigger picture is who “promoted” Bill Express to your business? If you relied on the advice or recommendation of an individual or some other party in making your Bill Express decision you might want to talk with your lawyer about any liability they may share.

I refer to my blog post from the weekend which outlines reasons Bill Express may be in breach of the agreement and why, to this non-lawyer, associated agreements could be terminated.

I stress, again, I am not a lawyer. My blog posts should not be taken as advice. The best advice for your business will be that for which you pay an appropriately qualified legal professional.

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Bill Express
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