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

Author: Mark Fletcher

Leveraging the monopoly

Stapled to the official Australia Post Order Form was the real reason for their junk mail in our post box – a one page sheet announcing: 1 DAY ONLY, 10% OFF STATIONERY.  This is further evidence of the Government owned business using its monopoly to take retail sales from independent retailers like newsagents.

The previous government said that Australia Post only offred retail products as incidental to portage products and services and that it would never abuse the monopoly to take retail business from others such as newsagents.

It will be interesting to see is the new Labor Government addresses this issue, whether they allow Australia Post management to continue to use government protection of their monopoly to take retail sales from family run newsagencies.  The stakes are high.  There are unions in Australia Post to consider as well as mums and dads who own newsagencies along with their tens of thousands of employees.

It all comes down to interpretation of the Act of Parliament under which Australia Post operates.  My reading is that the stationery flyer attached to the postal service form is not permitted under the act.  But I would take that view, it suits me.   A person or body less conflicted than me needs to look at this and advise the Government on how to navigate the issue.  If Australia Post is left to its current pla, there is no doubt jobs in newsagencies and other businesses will suffer.

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Australia Post

Free content at Wall Street Journal

It was only a matter of time before the new owners of the Wall Street Journal removed the price barrier to key online content.  Rupert Murdoch forecast as much months ago.  The announcement a couple of days ago is the first step of what many expect to be complete elimination of the subscription model.

It will be interesting to see how the folks at the Australian Financial Review react.  Despite their statements prior to Christmas that nothing would change, the Board will tolerate red ink for only so long.  The following passage from a report in The Australian yesterday makes a clear case for the free model – it’s about eyeballs.

“At the moment, we sell it to about 1 million people at a theoretical $US50 million ($55.8 million) a year,” Mr Murdoch said.

“But of that $US50 million, it costs probably $US15 million in costs of just getting subscribers and looking after them — so it’s (really) $US35 million. We think when it goes from 1 million subscribers to 20million people watching it around the world, that there will be more than enough advertising to make up the difference.”

I know of newsagents who will feel little connection with the store about the moves at the Wall Street Journal.

Newsagencies have been built around a paid model for accessing news and information, is changing.  Free newspapers in capital cities, free daily newspapers home delivered (in many US cities) and free high quality content online all challenge our model.  This challenge is an excellent opportunity, it is not something to ignore or fear.  I suspect many newsagents are doing both.

I would like to see newsagents engage in robust open debate in 2008 about their future in the face of the changes in how people access and consume news and information.  Such debate would guide better business decisions by newsagents and would-be newsagents.

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Media disruption

The Age trumps Hillary

Congratulations to the folks at The Age newspaper for pulling focus from the front page story about the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary with another garish and hated by customers stuck on ad – this time for their own newspaper. See for yourself how awful this looks…
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As for the offer on the ad, I don’t care for it. I’m a retail newsagent and have no interest in driving customers from my business to home delivery.

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newspaper masthead desecration

Make something great: with magazines

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We are using the theme of Make Something Great for our new magazine feature near one of our register points. 

Each title has been chosen because it’s about making something things: quilts, cross stitch, scrapbooks, cards, dolls, bears, knitting and beads.  Since newsagents are the only retailers of many of titles covering these subjects it’s a blue ocean opportunity for us – no competition and therefore, to me, a no-brainer. 

This promotion backs onto last week’s theme of holiday activities.  As usual with this display at the counter, customers walking up to purchase one item are making an impulse purchase of another from this display.

Newsagencies have excellent traffic.  It takes little effort to leverage that to above-average basket size (average spend per customer).

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magazines

Diet diary

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The Diet Diary on the cover of Good Health magazine this month is sponsored by Baker’s Delight. If you go to a Baker’s Delight store you’ll see copies of the diary being given away to customers.

Newsagents near a Baker’s Delight would do well to strike up a co-promotion deal with them – it would have been good if ACP had put this together as part of the promotion. I’d like Baker’s Delight stores to promote the magazine in newsagencies and newsagencies promote healthy products from Bakers Delight stores – with the diary as the link.

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magazines

Blogging frustration

As you can see from the formatting, we’re still dealing with the rapid migration from Movable Type to WordPress for managing content.  We have a new design which should be live Monday.  This will make posts easier to read.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Newsagents embrace online training

The industry’s first ever online training session, announced earlier this week by Tower Systems, is full.  The free training session on Magazine Management will be held next Tuesday.   Tower expects to announce more dates for this session next week.  The goal is to help Tower Newsagents cut time spent managing magazines and improve commercial outcomes from the category.

If this innovative training is successful, newsagents will have access to a suite of training from the comfort of their home of newsagency office – saving time and travel costs.

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magazines

Borders A&R date set

The ACCC has set January 20 2008 as the proposed date on which it will announce its decision regarding the purchase of Borders by A&R Whitcoulls Group.  If the acquisition proceeds it created a mega retail group not only covering books but also magazines since Supanews is part of the group.  The material at the ACCC website on the proposed acquisition makes for fascinating reading.

While I am comforted at the work of the folks at the ACCC on the implications for books, I am disappointed that they have not considered the implications for magazines.  Borders has achieved good magazine sales by offering a broad range of titles, many of which are imports.  If the learnings from this are applied across A&R stores, newsagents would be impacted and this would reduce competition and therefore disadvantage the consumer.

If the acquisition proceeds I’d expect to see an impact on some newsagents.  The best action we can take today to counter this is to get smart with magazines, obsess about them, focus on the titles you sell which no-one around you has – this is where I am seeing growth in my newsagencies and several others for which I have access to data.

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Newsagency challenges

Music card theatre

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It is fascinating watching customers interact with our new range of music cards based on names.  Yesterday, twice I saw people choose a card and take it across the shop to pay it for someone browsing magazines.  Beyond getting people interacting with product, it adds a bit of theatre to the location in the store where the card is played, others around look up – all good stuff in retail.

We are fortunate that this range is not in too many stores in our centre.  If that changes I would not expect the same level of excitement (and sales) from customers.

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Greeting Cards

Saliva and browsing

I watched a customer browser Woman’s Day, New Idea and the Herald Sun earlier this week. Browsing is not the right word – she read these almost cover to cover over twenty minutes, tucked away in a corner of one of our shops. I thought she was up to no good so I watched her, the whole time. She licked her fingers prior to turning each page. When she was done, she dropped all three titles near where they are displayed, but not quite right. No manners at all.

I’m okay with browsers, even those who appear to never buy anything. What I don’t like is browsers who leave their saliva behind for paying customers to touch. Who wants that?

Some days, customer experiences are wonderful. Other days, they are frustrating.

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Customers

Woman’s Day Super Puzzler blitz

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We treated the latest issue of Woman’s Day Super Puzzler quite differently to past issues. We left more stock in the Women’s Weeklies section than in the crossword section. Sales for this issue are up 50% compared to the same period for previous issues. This is an excellent result. I’ve checked with several other stores and while some show growth, none as high as ours. I take this as even more support for placement of key branded crossword product permanently with the weeklies.

What we did with Woman’s day Super Puzzler is more important than an aisle end display or some other poster program publishers like yet it has bee more successful. If only they would reward that business success more so that a pretty display. Yep, treat me like a business person, please.

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magazines

Cleo Click magazine launch

cleo_click.JPGCleo Click from ACP Magazines is a fascinating new magazine – launched today.

Extending the reach of the successful Cleo brand, the folks at ACP have created a title which claims, on the cover: everything inside is available online.  The ninemsn website has more of the pitch to girls who want become Web Queens.

I’m surprised that there is not a more significant online presence supporting the title – given the subject matter.  But, then, they are speaking to people currently offline and guiding them online so…

I like brand extensions in the magazine space and right now ACP are the masters if you look at what they are doing around Woman’s Day, Australian Women’s Weekly, Take 5 and, now, Cleo.

One challenge I see with Cleo Click is how we represent the proposition.  This is a title which has appeal beyond people who will browse women’s titles.

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magazines

Costco and magazines

Costco, a giant in warehouse retailing in the US and rapidly growing in the UK reportedly plans five stores (according to a report in The Age) for its first year in Australia. It will be interesting to see if their Aussie stores include magazines – they are a small selection of top selling magazine titles in the UK and already sell them in the US stores.

With more majors playing in the magazine space, the trend I’d expect to see in newsagencies is a decline in weeklies and high volume monthlies and growth in special interest and other titles not carried by the majors. If I am right, more than ever it will be crucial for newsagents to achieve equitable terms on these titles.

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magazines

December benchmark project

Following success of the November benchmark project I have decided to run one for December for Tower Newsagents.  To participate, please send a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box (lower left corner) to exclude home deliveries, set your first date range (on the left) to December 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007 and the date range of the right to December 1, 2006 to December 31, 2006.  Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au.

If you have switched your newsagency to the MPA magazine categories, and I hope you have, I’d like a second Monthly Sales Comparison – this time for the magazine department and with the category analysis ticked (lower right corner).

I’d like to complete the benchmark by the end of this week so reports within the next two days would be appreciated.  Once December is done I’ll conduct a similar study for six months to December 31.

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magazines

Can’t see Marie Claire

marie_claire_glasses.JPGNewsagents who stack the latest issue of Marie Claire into their shelves will obscure the title because of the free sunglasses stuck to a bit of cardboard inserted into the magazine. One alternative is to remove these and have them behind the counter – but you lose the in-store promotion opportunity and lump in extra labour to manage this and space requirements to store the sunglasses. Ugh. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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magazines

Not another computer magazine!

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Well, it’s not a magazine, more like a book but distributed as a magazine.  Computers, Windows and the Internet has out of date content.  By any measure, it is useless – except for the distributor and publisher who unlock cash from newsagents given that we pay for it six months before it unsold copies are die to be sent back.  This title is a con and the folks at NDD know it.  It should never have been published let alone distributed.  Last year we returned everything sent and this year they increased our supply.  Yep, a con!  Sure we can early return – but it has come in too late for that this month so we’re out of pocket for at the very least 30 days.

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magazines

Welcome back ACP

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It’s good to finally receive some marketing material from ACP Magazines’ Connections newsagent in-store marketing program. I wonder how many newsagents started using their Connections aisle ends or windows for promoting other product?

Publishers need to realise that magazines are published 52 weeks a year and we’re open 52 weeks a year. Turning off marketing support provides us with an opportunity to find other uses for the promotional space as my post earlier this week showed.

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magazines

Another weekly magazine?

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I have nothing against the Scots.  I am sure that this magazine, No1, or Free or whatever it is called – (yep, I am confused) is a good seller in Scotland.  As the masthead says, it’s the top seller.  But do we really need this title in Australia?  We are straining under a mass of imported weeklies from the UK already.   Now we have to find retail space for this new title – in an area already short of real-estate.  This is a title I, as magazine czar for all newsagents, would have NOT allowed to our channel.  The sooner we collude and block access to titles like this on current terms the better.

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magazines

Holiday magazine display

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The photo shows our latest magazine feature display – magazines themed around holiday activities.  It’s at our Forest Hill store.

You’ll see we have gone for a mixture of children’s activities as well as places for adults to visit.

 As with previous display, magazines have sold of this stand almost right away. While this is, in part, due to the location next to a busy register, it is also due to providing context for the purchase of the titles. Sometimes leading customers to a purchase works well.

The display has been up since Friday last week and we have already topped some titles up twice.

There is no doubt that the demographic of our newsagency (and most newsagencies I suspect) changes during the holidays. We seize this change as an opportunity to win new customers and make money visitors to the area. Each week for the next few weeks this display will change to try and tap into the holiday demographics.

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magazines

Online user meeting for newsagents

In addition to the free magazine management training event I blogged about earlier, Tower Systems has announced its first online user meeting.  This free forum connects newsagents using the Tower software along with some experts from within Tower.  Most of the meeting will be spent answering user queries – newsagents learn well from listening to questions others ask and taking on board the answers.

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About us

Online magazine management training

Tower Systems has announced the newsagency channel’s first ever online magazine management training session for Tuesday January 15. The session filled in no time. Using the latest web event hosting tools, newsagents will be able to participate without having to leave their own businesses. Connecting to the Internet for visual content and using the telephone (toll free) for audio, everyone gets to participate as if they are in a function room together.

More training sessions will follow including more on magazine management.

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Being cheap

envelopes.JPGI was surprised to see bundles of old greeting card envelopes on a table for sale in front of a newsagency last week. I thought what a cheap message this gives to browsers. Any spare envelopes we have in my stores we keep behind the counter for customers who bring cards without an envelope or to give to customers who may need an envelope for some reason. They are not something I’d sell.

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Greeting Cards

We’re back

Boy it’s been a frustrating 48+ hours for this blog and those working behind the scenes.  Traffic to the blog was crashing the server on which we were residing in Sydney and the server host took us offline.  That was Monday.  Thanks to the stellar efforts of our web developer, Richard Lee, we’re back online.  To achieve this Richard migrated us from Movable Type to WordPress.  There are some kinks to iron out but, overall, we’re back!

 

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About us