To all who read my ramblings here, have a wonderful Christmas Day. I hope you get an opportunity to shutdown, turn off work and relax. For many of us it all starts again on Boxing Day. I’m not complaining, it’s a life I have chosen.
What I have enjoyed most about this Christmas is the customers – so many wonderful stories, so many nice smiles. There is no better place than the shop floor some days.
I was tidying Christmas cards and noticed a mature lady spending a long time looking at cards. My offer of help led to her sharing a story of a tradition she follows that goes to the heart of the season.
My customer was not there to buy a card but to look at them – to read the words of the Wife cards. Her husband died a few years earlier and he always went to great lengths to find a card with just the right words. He didn’t say much when alive and Christmas and Birthdays were the times he let her know how he felt, through the cards. She has a box of them in her ‘linen press’.
Each Christmas she visits a newsagency or a card shop to read the cards her husband would have browsed. As she told me yesterday, she feels closer to him at Christmas for having done this.
I left her to browse and went about my business, happier for the encounter.
Customers have the most wonderful stories.
Fitdeck started selling in our newsagency when the Herald Sun ran a story about Adam Ramanauskas and his endorsement of the fitness product. We sold out of our first shipment in a week and are now working through our second shipment.
Fitdeck is a product every newsagent should sell – complimentary for buyers of Men’s Health and Women’s Health. We have it at the counter in part because it is in the news and people will recognise it and in part because people ask if we have it. I love that the Fitdeck website promotes that it is available at all leading newsagents and bookstores.
If you found this blog post through a Google or other search are are looking for Fitdeck, you can contact our newsagency at 03 9878 2515.
There is an interesting discussion going on in the UK about the cover price of newspapers and magazines. Some newsagents want no cover price printed on publications so they can set the prices themselves. The National Federation of Newsagents in the UK, recently decided to investigate the feasibility of removing cover prices.
An issue driving the UK discussion – who carries the cost of the supply chain – is relevant in Australia. While magazine publishers and distributors have made great strides in cutting costs out of their supply models in recent years, the refusal of some to transact efficiently with newsagents has denied us the opportunity to cut costs out of our businesses.
There was a time when boxed card sales fell off and single card sales took over – usually a week or so out from Christmas. At our Forest Hill store, where we have the longest history with boxed cards, this year has been different. Boxed card sales continue to be strong. We’re not engaged in discounting so the cards are selling on their merits.
Andrew Rieu has joined Limelight magazine as a columnist. This will broaden the appeal of the title and give us good promotional hook. I mentioned a couple of days ago about the Melbourne Observer newspaper with Rieu on the cover – it sold out. So did Limelight last month with the Rieu DVD. We have sold 80% of the current issue of Limelight. Staying on top of people and topics helps us be opportunistic retailers. For example, Limelight will be of greater interest as a putaway thanks to the Rieu column.
The motoring magazine display we created last week has led to a 30% increase in the sale of motoring magazines over the same period last year. Six months to date we have recorded little year-on-year growth for motoring titles – until our display was created. Much of the growth has come from the titles included in the display – we were careful to choose titles which made for good Christmas gifts – such as the HSV Yearbook.
The base off which we achieved the 30% growth for motoring magazines over five days was 145 copies.
We obsess about magazines, implementing all the newsXpress magazine strategies as well as some local strategies chasing opportunities we see.
The motoring display we created has been more important to us this last week than displays suppliers have had us do in our newsagency – in part, because it focuses on the category as opposed to a title and in part because it present Christmas gift-giving opportunities. I am disappointed that our initiative, while more valuable for sales, will not be recognised by any of the magazine publishers as it falls outside the same-size-fits-all approach to marketing against which they measure and reward newsagencies.
I’d like our key suppliers to look for more opportunities to reward entrepreneurial effort which generates incremental business – such as this motoring display.
We have three aisle ends at our Frankston newsagency now for magazine displays: one for the ACP magazines’ Connections promotion of the week and the other two for titles we choose. We joined Connections a couple of weeks ago. The aisle ends work well when the publishers provide sufficient and appropriate material of use – as happened for Madison last week.
This display is the first ever done by Simon, manager of our Frankston store.
The challenge is when Connections promotes a low selling title or for which you do not have the stock to justify the real-estate investment.
Why do we need to have two issues of this British Homes and Gardens magazine on our shelves at the same time? I am sure the importer and distributor will have a reason but as a retailer funding their decision it makes no sense to me. This behaviour denies newsagents the opportunity to effectively retail and it sucks us of cash. It is yet another of a broken magazine supply chain where newsagents and their efficient distribution system are abused.
The rough weather these past couple of days have thrown Christmas trading into chaos for several newsagents In know. Yesterday and Thursday were particularly bad in Melbourne – across the suburbs. While stock has been damaged, the more inconvenient pain has been the loss to communications from the shop – hitting the financial services and payment methods. If people can’t pay on a card they often leave the goods at the counter and walk out. In some stores, credit and debit cards are used for a third of all transactions.
While sales of Christmas wrapping paper are strong, it is the bags which have been a sell out. From this small Aussie designed and hand made bag right through to the large licenced product like the Spiderman Christmas offer from Hallmark. Getting extra stock has been the challenge – not so much for Forest Hill which we had good data for but other locations where it was a bit of a roll of the dice.
Being the hands on (obsessive) type, I’m spending many hours each day at the moment in and moving between our newsagencies at Forest Hill and Frankston, the newsXpress corporate store at Watergardens and the three Sophie Randall stores. The thrill of this is seeing Christmas retail from many perspectives, especially on categories common to each business: cards, wrap, diaries and calendars. I’ve learnt more about demographics and customers in the last few weeks as a result of this and am excited to play more in 2008.
A common question people reading my ramblings here ask is why should they buy a newsagency? They see issues I raise as show stoppers in their consideration of buying a newsagency. Sure, there are challenges. Every business has challenges. Overall, newsagents can manage the challenges. A well managed newsagency runs well – the key is good processes, sound advice from experts / mentors and a regular stream of marketing and business development initiatives.
Life as a newsagent is good. It’s honorable work and important for the community – we’re the last bastion of personal service in a very corporate retail world.
Newsagencies have an excellent future if we focus on the right business decisions for our businesses. This means we broaden the focus of the newsagency in some areas and narrow the focus in other areas. For example, we need to tell our core suppliers we will do less of their bidding unless it can be demonstrated this work (posters, displays and the like) generates real revenue for us as opposed to them.
By leveraging our traffic, building a deeper basket on the back of increased traffic while at the same time tweaking margin, we can build very successful businesses. Our blessing, right now, is our traffic. Today, this is what makes buying a newsagency a good move. Entrepreneurial newsagents can leverage that traffic and create for themselves and excellent return on their investment.
Te key is to know you are going into a master / slave relationships in some parts of the business and to make decisions which minimise pain from the lashes as much as possible.
Jane was in severe pain and facial swelling due to a tooth problem at our newsXpress Forest Hill store a week back. Mr Wu, always ready with remedies for any situation, told Jane to have someone born in the year of the tiger to paint on her face in ink and using a brush the sign of the tiger with a circle around it – over where the swelling was. Respecting her customer, Jane had this done by Luke, who met the criteria, as she was leaving for work. Maybe it was the distraction of being stared at or maybe Mr Wu’s sage advice was right, but the swelling started to go down on Jane’s drive home.
It’s amazing what customers tell you sometimes.
We received two copies of this Animal Songs book from a magazine distributor on September 12. It’s due for return next week. We have not sold either copy.
Magazine distributors ought not distribute books without permission. Titles with a shelf life longer than four weeks ought to be billed only after scanned sales data is provided. This title is another example of the abuse of the newsagency channel by a broken magazine supply chain.
We are playing the Christmas Channel from SKY.fm Internet radio in two of our newsagencies. It’s a great way to bring in Christmas music without having to change CDs.
The Melbourne Observer has a cover story this week about Andre Rieu – guaranteeing excellent sales this week before Christmas. We have put copies of the Observer on the counter, next to copies of Limelight, the ABC mag with the Rieu DVD sampler on the cover. I’d encourage Victorian newsagents to try this, Rieu is very popular with broad appeal.
The Observer continues to actively support newsagents with listings and other mentions in its pages – giving more space than any other publication to our channel.
This Kitchen Yearbook is another title chocking newsagencies. Fat, long shelf life, over supplied and taking newsagent cash away from more productive use. Key magazine stakeholders such as Pacific Magazines and ACP Magazines need to understand that the abuse of the magazine distribution system by publishers of titles such as this is part of the cause for newsagents not having time or resources for elsewhere in their businesses.
I am happy to carry to yearbook but would prefer to pay based on scanned sales when it comes off the shelf.
Luxury Home Design Collectors Edition is a good exampl of what is wrong with magazine distribution in Australia. The long shelf life – six months, it’s size – close to 4cm, it’s cover price – $15.00, and the scale our model – driving, I estimate, a sell through rate of around 40% in most newsagencies.
Titles like this make up the 65% of magazines which are cash-flow negative for newsagents.
The Australian Newsagents’ Federation invited newsagents using a computer system to respond how they rate the customer service experience. 91 responded. The ANF has published the results at their website including verbatim all comments registered by newsagents. The comments make for interesting reading as do the ratings.
I am thrilled to that out of five possible service levels, 67% of Tower newsagents gave us the highest rating, 15% rated us at the next highest level and 12.5% at the third highest level (acceptable). Our challenge is to improve our service so that in the next survey we rate even better.
As the biggest software supplier to newsagents we have more at stake. However, as newsagents, we understand every day the importance good software backed by excellent service. Thank you to all newsagents who participated.
Some shock jocks. journalists and commentators – and their followers – have been doing their best to take the Ho Ho Ho out of Christmas.
Our experience, behind the counter in our newsagencies, is they have failed.
A common comment from customers when they see the t-shirt (modelled beautifully by jane and Jo from our newsXpress Forest Hill location) is good on you or some idiot wanted to ban that, followed by a laugh.
We are congratulated, smiled at or, if we are lucky, Ho Ho Ho ed at. We often use t-shirts to connect with seasons and this Ho Ho Ho line has received the best reaction I can remember.
Interesting to see the over the counter magazine subscription offers from Pacific Magazines evolve further this Christmas. The photo shows a rack of subscription packs for five Pacific titles from a Newslink location in Brisbane airport yesterday. The packaging is a considerable improvement on what has been tested here before and what I first saw in the UK in WH Smith locations in 2005.
The latest subs package from Pacific is a considerable improvement on the magazine subs offer pitched through Bill Express newsagents. The key is how we merchandise the offer – in this case, they look like gifts and are therefore able to be displayed with gifts.
I’d like to sell two types of magazine subscriptions. One for use as a gift and fulfilled through home delivery and the other fulfilled through pick-up from my shop. While not core business, I can see an opportunity ti increase sales of magazines through my outlet with access to these.
The offer of an interest free loan from the Herald & Weekly Times to Victorian newsagents to fund a move away from the POS Solutions DOS software has engaged many of the remaining 180 POS DOS users. The non-compliant POS DOS software has been holding back technology advances for newsagents for too long.
It will be interesting to see how News Ltd handles the same problem elsewhere. My estimate is that of the 700 POS Solutions newsagent users, around 40 are still using DOS. The Victorian move at least offers a model for consideration.
