Someone needs to remind the folks at News Magazines that guys like to browse motor bike magazines. Bagging Two Wheels – just so you can move out of date stock – will not help sales. It will frustrate browsers and cause trash in newsagencies because some browsers won’t be stopped. When I saw the bagged product yesterday I was inclined to open the bag and put just the current issue of the magazine on the shelf.
Newsagent suppliers reading this blog would be well advised to leave newsagents who sell lottery products alone over the next week.
The OzLotto $40 million is the best jackpot opportunity we have had in a long time.
Each of us ought to be throwing every ounce of energy we have at additional sales – our stores will be filled with people who only buy tickets when an opportunity like this arises.
Our display of the Winter Favourites magazine / cookbook from ACP Magazines about which I blogged here a week ago has generated a 72% sell through rate in seven days.
We will sell out with at least five weeks left of the on-sale period. I’m happy with that and won’t be chasing any extra stock.
As I was preparing for my presentation to the Queensland Newsagents Conference yesterday on the Entrepreneurial Newsagent, I pondered how incestuous our channel was. While networking with fellow newsagents is important, too much of this works against us.Â
Hiring from within, newsagents leaving to work for suppliers, vice versa … too much of this makes us unhealthy as we feed of each other’s insularity. Â
I suspect we are more likely to find more useful ideas by socialising outside our channel, by attending non newsagent trade shows and non newsagent conferences, by visiting other retailers and by working with people with no newsagency experience.
Just as we can become store-blind about our own businesses, we can become channel-blind as to opportunities which we ought to consider. The only way to break this is to mix more with people outside our channel.
While it was great to catch up with colleagues in Queensland yesterday, for our own future, a more innovative view of the future, we need to cast our eyes far and wide. Here are a few of the points from slides I covered in this part of the presentation:
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for newsagents networking. My sense, however, is that we will get more value, for our future, by networking more outside our channel. Fresh ideas (fresh blood) will strengthen us.
I am grateful to Dr Piet Bakker’s Newspaper Innovation blog for keeping us updated on the growth in free daily newspapers around the world. While the free dailies target a different consumer to that we see in Australian newsagencies, there will be an impact as some overseas experiences show. Newsagents need to watch these trends.
My software company, Tower Systems, yesterday announced exclusive partnership with Kachingo, a new in-store marketing initiative for newsagents. You can read more about this here. I expect that newsagents will hear plenty about Kachingo in the next few months. It provides a genuinely new marketing opportunity for newsagents and their suppliers.
We asked our team to help drive OzLotto sales in last night’s $30 million jackpot. The result was a 40% kick in sales from the previous week when the prize was $25 million and from which we saw a 50% kick from the previous week.
Ben, Con, Toni and Jane, our full time team, did a tremendous job as did our casuals. Jason, our manager has double movie passes to hand out as a reward. Around two thirds of the growth on the previous week was achieved as add-on sales through over the counter conversation. No gimmicks, no challenges, just a comment about the $30 million.
Now that OzLotto jackpotted again we will kick the game up a notch.
David Stephenson has consulted to to top publishing organisations in the USA. His expertise has seen changes in thinking in supply chain logistics, use of EDI and addressing oevr and under supply.
That is, in part, how David was introduced a keynote speaker to the full room at the Queensland Newsagents State Conference this morning in Brisbane.
David Stephenson is character created by Steve Davis, a comedian hired by the QNF to open the conference this morning. he was very funny. You can see the text of the presentation here.
It took a while to realise that David was not who he said he was. Some of what he was saying was real: that new media is challenging the traditional newsagency business model and that the current magazine supply model is flawed against newsagents.
It was great to start the day long conference with such an enjoyable presentation and that alone the way, Steve reminded us some truths about our businesses.
In among Steve’s humor were some important messages for the magazine distributors in the audience: we need EDI returns ASAP, we need engagement on how our existing suppliers are playing in the online space and we need to cut costs out of our supply chain.
The key is whether we make genuine progress on these challenges. We’ve left to suppliers in the past. If we (newsagents) act in unison we can force change in our favour.
Hallmark in the US has launched a range of Mother’s Day cards which allow you to record an audio message for your mother. Pretty cool.
You get to do as many takes at the recording as you like. The range is only available through their Gold Crown stores – I like that it’s limited.
Australia Post’s Mothers Day brochure demonstrates how far the government owned retail outlets have strayed from the services they are required to offer under the Act.
There are gift cards, books and all manner of Mother’s Day items but no stamps or postal services.
The Act permits Australia Post to get into other areas if they incidental. This Mother’s day flyer is hardly incidental. They are using the postal service brand to take business from private businesses like newsagencies.
I hope that Stephen Conroy, the new Minister responsible, takes a careful look at Australia Post and best practice in the area of a national postal service.
More fool us I guess. We took on the Bake cookbook published under the Australian Women’s Weekly brand. We knew the majors would have it but did not expect Big W to sell it at 50% off. Yes, more fool us I guess. The folks at ACP would know the deal done with Big W when offering this title to newsagents. Rather than us looking expensive, again (and as usual) we could have been given a deal to allow us to compete or have been warned off. rather than looking expensive, Bake in our newsagency is now a true loss leader.
Property and investing is the theme of our magazine category feature display this week. The photo does not show the detail in display at the top – it’s a montage of banknotes and looks good in person.
We’re anal about changing this display weekly, it’s a Monday morning task.
I am interested that a couple of publishers have suggested that we should feature their product in this stand. I’ve explained it’s not about a single title as such but more about bringing a category to the fore which would otherwise not feature at the counter.
“… as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn’t do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990’s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.†Rupert Murdoch, speaking April 13, 2005 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
I was reminded of this quote over the weekend as I prepared for a presentation I am giving tomorrow to the Queensland Newsagents State Conference.
Rupert Murdoch’s speech was a seminal moment in newspaper publishing. The complacency of which he spoke was replaced by frenetic activity within News Corp. and other publishing companies around the world. While they have invested considerably in online and print businesses in the years since, it is the online investments which draw the most attention.
It is interesting comparing the activity of newspaper publishers since April 2005 in pursuit of new revenue streams with the activity of newsagents over the same period. Most newsagents continue to be complacent about the disruption occurring to the supply and retail models on which our businesses are based.
We appear to be getting more cookbooks and crosswords under magazine brands from other categories than ever before. Like the Take 5 Easy As 1 2 3 title. These spin off magazines are squeezing the traditional titles in these categories. Wheras in the past we’d try and promote these add-on products near the ‘parent’ title. Now, with so many, it’s a challenge.
Notebook magazine has been featured as our counter magazine since Saturday. It’s orking, sales are up.
On a good day, I’m pleased with the sales our efforts in this space generates. On a bad, it annoys the crap out of me that we do this for free while other magazine retailers are paid for access to such premium space. Billboard space in newsagencies has a value which publishers don’t recognise – and we let them.
On April 10, Bill Express wrote to both of my newsagencies which have the service, advising a new revenue structure and threatening early termination fees should I seek to exit the contract early. On April 18, I received a fax saying that my contract had come to an end and that monthly payments have ceased and that they will put a new contract to me shortly.
The problem with the second fax is that it effectively varies the terms of the original contract. It appears that the six months notice and automatic roll over is no longer in play. I’d need to check the original contract but I suspect that Bill Express owes me money back dated to when the contract ended a couple of months ago.
Part of the problem for newsagents about the Bill Express mess is the various contracts and subsidies associated with the service. That and the inability to get anyone from Bill Express to respond to calls, emails or letters.
I have lodged a complaint with the office of the Small Business Commissioner in Victoria and sought to have this matter mediated.
Our newsXpress Hot Ink pricing beats the ink offer being put about by Australia Post government owned stores.
Where we can’t beat the protected Australia Post retail network is in cost of traffic generation. Their monopoly over postal products and the brand recognition and traffic this brings means customer acquisition costs less than in newsagencies. This is what the ACCC should look at when they review cross-subsidisation within Australia Post.
The photo is of a two page flyer Australia Post is distributing at the moment. While the deals are not that great, that they come out under the Australia Post brand will take some ink business from us.
I hope that the new Federal Government engages more on this issue that the previous Government. They need to decide whether it is acceptable that the retail network they own and protect is used to take revenue from independent small businesses.
Reuters has a report about the latest innovation in Japan in the development of e-paper, technology newspaper publishers have money in because o the opportunity for providing a reloadable portable platform almost as convenient as paper. Watch the Reuters video and see how it works – there is an ad at the front of the video, ignore that.
As I blogged a few days ago we did not receive Take 5 stock on Wednesday. While replacement stock arrived late that day, the damage was done as the photo which I took yesterday shows.
We sell around 75% of our Take 5 copies on the on sale day. Even being without stock for two thirds of a day can hurt our figures for the week. If I had accepted what the Network Services call centre operator first advised, I would not have received replacement stock until Friday.
Magazine distributors need to take more attention of the magazine sales decay curve for weeklies in newsagencies. Doing so will help them better understand the high cost of missed deliveries and, hopefully, encourage them to be more proactive at rectifying the situation.
We are promoting Australian Women’s Weekly at our counter this weekend – buy the magazine and get a free Darrell Lea chocolate bar. We’re funding this ourselves to promote the title as well as the Darrell Lea range.  While we have some some through the promotion, it’s not setting our customers on fire.
My blog post yesterday about helping independent magazines has struck a chord, several independent publishers have made contact to talk about how they can engage more directly with newsagents to promote their product. I’d expect to see more valuable and direct relationships to evolve outside the traditional magazine supply channel. Publishers delivering more than a 25% share of magazine cover price will focus the minds of newsagents on their product above others.
The State and Federal governments missed an opportunity to lead yesterday by not reaching agreement on the plastic shopping bag issue. As I blogged here a month ago, many consumers prefer plastic bags. This is why most retailers don’t levy a charge. Government action makes enforcement easier. While I am not keen on regulation, the only way to dramatically reduce plastic bag usage is through leadership from government.
In a world first, Relay, a French magazine distributor is offering customers download access to 400 digital magazines. The cost is just 17.90 Euros a month. Under indivdual pricing, this would usually only buy access to four or five titles.
This amazing all-you-can-read magazine subscription offer underscores the cost effectiveness for publishers and distributors of the digital magazine model. The news coverage (PC World, CIO to name two) will lure plenty of consumers to the world of digital magazines.
Consumers have access to mainstream titles as well as plenty of special interest titles. There is no lmit to how many titles they download in a month. The only restriction is two downloads per title in a month.
There’s no limit on how many different magazines subscribers can download, although they can only download two copies of any given issue.
The key pitch of the offer is the environment. This is underscored by the relationship relay has with World Wide Fund for Nature – they receive a donation for every monthly subscription and in return promote the offer as good for the environment.
Print magazine publishers who produce digital editions will tell us that the online subscriber is different to the over the counter subscriber. While I think that is true for some, it is not true for all. As digital grows we will lose print sales.
This needs to be on the minds of newsagents as they plan the next generation of magazine fixtures and newsagency floor layout.
From a publisher’s perspective, digital is attractive. With dramatically lower supply chain costs, no shrinkage and no return costs, the only real challenge for a digital only title is ho to find your consumers. What relay is doing is doing in France demonstrates to publishers the role a smart magazine distributor can play.
We need to watch and understand this space as it evolves.
We are trying some new products for Mother’s Day this year. In addition to Darrel Lea (the Mum’s Bag is a good seller!) and social stationery we have a range of small gift packs, some mugs and other items.
We have also changed our approach to display – located it closer to our greeting card offer – all visible from our main window – as the photo of part of our range shows.
We have had the display out for two weeks and it’s drawing good results.
We refresh the display weekly, moving products around, changing the focus of the offer – this is important since newsagencies have so many regulars that they become store-blind.
Apropos of nothing really, how about this amazing wireless portable baseball scoreboard, SportsCast.
In sports mad Australia an AFL or NRL version of SportsCast would work a treat I am sure.
It’s something I’d like to sell in my newsagencies. In the US it is sold through the Brookstone stores and wesite.