Newsagents are excited by the promotional opportunities of Kachingo, a soon to launch customer rewards program unlike any other currently operating in Australia. Given the newsagent interest and the opportunity for solid business growth being driven by Kachingo, we are ensuring that the Tower Systems newsagent software supports Kachingo from launch. The appropriate link will be released as part of a software update and at no cost to newsagents.
This is our first crack at strengthening our offering around our copying service. The copier is hidden behind the magazine displays. While not ideal, this is better than leaving the copier technology open with no up sell pitch around it. We are still working on the design of fixturing which would surround the copier make for a more professional presentation and display appropriate accompanying product.
Steve is a village Sub Postmaster and with his wife runs a village shop and post office in Sussex, England. He blogs about this and the changing face of retail in the UK at his excellent blog, Village Counter Talk. This is a must read for newsagents.
It is wonderful to find a newspaper and magazine retailer across the other side of the world writing about many topics covered here. I am especially interested in his posts about the weight of newspapers. Australian distribution newsagents would do well to read his comments – especially the fee scale for inserts and how some publishers and advertisers stay inside the trigger point weight for inserts.
Steve posted some comments at my blog yesterday which will resonate with Australian newsagents:
I am a news & magazine retailer trading in West Sussex, England. You identify one of my great frustrations with our trade, that is the wholesalers and publishers hold the whip hand and given a chance stuff what ever they like out to us retailers.
Reading Steve’s blog, it soon become apparent that at our collective independent end of the newspaper and magazine supply chain we have common problems regardless of location. The solution lives on a strong collusive stance which puts our businesses first.
Gerard Munday was thinking about his newsagency of the future years ago. Patterson Road, Patterson, Victoria, where his newsagency is located, was dying with little commercial activity to bring business or consumers to the area. He had to do something.
For years now Gerard has focused on growing the business outside his four walls. Last year he took this to a new level by creating a website: pattersonroad.com.au – establishing the street in which the business is located as the brand. In an online sense, he owns the entire street. This is a brilliant move – completely logical when you consider how the deep local connection of a newsagency.
The overarching brand of Patterson Road is used for their tobacco wholesale, distribution and retail businesses with each also having their own identity.
Gerard has now branched out further, offering website development services to other newsagents. He and his team are able to provide website development and hosting from basic facilities through to full-on ecommerce facilities.
Take a look at the website for Gerard’s newsagency and the home delivery account payment facilities. Gerard says this side of the business is growing every day – better serving existing customers and bringing in new customers.
I know from my own experience with Inkfast that a web presence can attract a broader and more profitable customer base that retail alone.
Newsagents establishing websites like Gerard offers will have contact with new customers and for a fraction of traditional marketing costs. Key to makaing this work is to take the opportunity to extend your business and therefore your relevance.
Check out the websites Gerard’s team has developed for Bell Park Newsagency and Blackburn South Newsagency.
You can contact Gerard by email.
Footnote: Gerard has been a customer of my software company, Tower Systems, for around fifteen years. He also manages our mail services.
We decided to give Famous magazine a kick along this week and placed it next to our main newspaper stand. The result has been excellent – I’d expect a sell through of 90% by the end of today.
The display next to the newspaper stand is usually reserved for Alpha but since it sold out we thought we would give Famous a crack. I like locating it next to the newspaper because so many other retailers now have a magazine of the week or a feature magazine display on the counter – so much so that consumers are, I suspect, blind to them.
While we have two magazine aisle ends strongly promoting titles as well as two front of shop second location displays for popular titles, famous often misses out because it is not in our pool of top performing titles.
This week’s experience shows that it may be getting lost in the regular display space and that an occasional promotion like this may help it better connect with our customers.
While newspaper professionals in the US debate whether to include advertisements on the front page, the advertising department at The Age demonstrates, again, its dominance over design and editorial with a bold post it note type ad stuck over the masthead for the Mt Buller ski resort. Customers hate these ads. They increase trash and the damage the product when ripped off.
You know your marketing is working when a customers walk in clutching a flyer you have distributed and they ask for a specific item listed. You feel especially chuffed when the item they want is something you would not usually carry. This has happened several times during our Tax Time Savings promotion over the last month.
This week, a customer came in wanting to purchase the Fellows shredder. There was no hesitation on their part: it was a known brand, the product was well represented on the brochure and the price was competitive. The sale was easy.
Playing in the home office space has been a challenge for many newsagents. The new regular stationery marketing program we are part is showing good signs of success. It is certainly broadening our range and delivering new customers to our shop.
It took off like a bushfire and customers embraced it. Now we are overloaded. The publishers who were there first, Lovatts and Puzzler, remain but have been joined by a ton of copycats and this is seeing many newsagents overserviced in the Sudoku segment.
Just another case for the magazine czar. Half the Sudoku titles sent to newsagents should not have permission to be supplied.
If you believe that newspapers have a bright future then you will not want to read A Perfect Storm, and excellent blog post by Mark Potts at his Recovering Journalist Blog.
We are insulated in Australia in terms of newspaper sales. Strong state based titles with good home delivery penetration mean we do not see the numbers publishers in the US and seeing regularly now. To be concerned about the future of print newspapers is not to criticise the product but, rather, to acknowledge that new technology will impact on how and where we consumer news and information. Potts has posts some good suggestions.
What frustrates me is that every newspaper publisher executive I have heard talking with Australian small business newsagents say it is business as usual, keep investing, we are your partner. Well, the reality is that what is happening in the US will happen here, not tomorrow but it will happen. This is why Australian publishers are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in online businesses.
Interesting to see the New York Times in the promotional material for Apple’s iPhone. The example shows how the iPhone can be used to read the newspaper. Who needs a print edition?
Newspapers have a deadline. But online media does not have a deadline, only story births. If any of my staff mention the word deadline, I will fire them.
Kowit Sanandang, Digital Media Director of the Bangkok Post. Source: AsiaMedia.
Fairfax newspapers The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald today run stories about the ACCC legal action against Google and the Trading Post. It is disappointing that Fairfax is quick to list other companies which may be guilty of similar behaviour but not any company associated with them. As I have documented here before, Fairfax’s RSVP used a campaign based on fudging search results where people were looking for 3loves, a free online dating business I own – connected with the Find It online classifieds business.
The Fairfax reporting today demonstrates, at best, sloppy reporting and at worst, bias.
I know Fairfax was embarrassed by my revealing here six months ago the campaign from which they benefited – they immediately took down the campaign. No apology. No acknowledgement. And, now, they are prepared to finger others yet not themselves. The original post about the Fairfax/RSVP scam can be found here.
Every week now I am seeing evidence that blogging here about poor scale our by NDD is achieving a better outcome for my newsagency that dealing with them through regular communication channels. Titles such as this school selection book are being supplied in numbers which reflect the sell through rate of previous issues – as it should be.
That I have to blog for such an outcome is unfortunate. Less than 10 newsagents have blogs so the opportunity of public humiliation of NDD to achieve an outcome is not available to the broader channel.
Key to what I have sought from NDD is equitable supply based on the sales data I send them daily. I am not unique. I trust that NDD has altered its behaviour for other newsagents as it has for my newsagency.
A NSW newsagent was recently ordered by the NSW Department of Fair Trading to refund a customer $1,000 for partworks purchased where the customer was not able to complete the series because of failings in the supply model through to newsagents. While the distributor involved, Gordon and Gotch, have agreed, after much pressure from the newsagent, to compensate the newsagent, the problem of partworks supply remains serious.
On the one hand newsagents are thrilled that they are the only retail channel in Australia offering partworks. That magazine distributors ignore data (see earlier post today) and deliberately short supply harms newsagents and gets their customers off side.
The partworks model can work if the importer, distributors and newsagents actively work together. Sadly, for many years now the words have been the same and follow-up action not forthcoming.
Maybe more customers need to pursue Consumer Affairs or Fair Trading. Alternatively the suppliers could work with newsagents on a fair and commercial basis – that way everyone wins.
Is one of Melbourne’s two newspapers about to engage major railway station based marketing initiative? A check of this ad posted yesterday afternoon at at seek.com.au suggests so.
We are currently on the hunt for new team members to assist one of our largest clients with their new customer program.
Work will be located at outer metropolitan train stations from 5.30am to 8.30am Monday to Friday. Acting as an ambassador for this iconic Melbourne media product, you will act as a contact point for commuters to purchase their daily news hit!
If you are looking for a role that has it all- working in the great outdoors, being a COMPLETE hero as you ensure the public get their favourite media product and finishing work just in time to watch everyone else start then apply now!
Work locations include: Bayswater, Berwick, Cranbourne, Hallam, Broadmeadows, Oak Park, Preston, Regent, Carnegie, Hughesdale, Albion, St Albans, Mooroolbark & Mt Waverley.
$20.00 per hour + available incentives to reward hard work and loyalty.
If this is for a newspaper why are they hiring and not the local newsagent?
When I first read the ad I wondered if it was to distribute MX (the free daily newspaper) in a morning edition. But the ad text makes it clear this is about selling something.
If my suspicions are right and this is for a newspaper publisher sales initiative then I’d be interested to understand where newsagents fit in the model and whether there has been consultation.
GNS, the stationery warehouse owned by newsagents has banned VANA, the Victorian newsagent association from having a stand at this year’s GNS Market Fair – the only trade show for newsagents. VANA has been involved in Market Fair since it began and indeed had ‘ownership’ over a decent chunk of the floor space sold at the trade show. VANA was involved in the Victorian newsagent trade show for years prior to the arrival of GNS in Victoria.
This decision and the decision to ban newsXpress exhibiting at GNS Market Fairs are proof of a Board out of touch with what newsagents want.
Magazine distributors have criticised newsagents for years about lack of compliance. Now, the ball is on the other foot. Part of the compliance regime is that newsagents supply distributors with pre-sold data – listing the number of each title for which the newsagent has a firm order. The idea was that the distributors would use this to ensure that at least minimum orders are fulfilled – essential for partworks.
The distributors are letting newsagents down. They are not using the data and newsagents are often, with partworks, supplied fewer copies than firm orders from customers of long standing.
Newsagents are rightly questioning the value of the much vaunted IT standards.
Newsagents using software from my company account for at least 75% of the compliant newsagents providing data – one distributor says we have an 85% share of compliant newsagents. I know from talks with some of these compliant newsagents that their clear and trusted data is being ignored by distributors. They are being supplied fewer copies of some titles than their firm orders. The magazine distributor involved knows that they are failing the system they helped create – they are making the newsagent look stupid.
Newsagents who were bereted into complying and promised better business outcomes are rightly asking whether the investment was worth it.
To the magazine distributor executives reading this – fix the problem, act commercially with newsagents, work with us and help us sell more magazines. You have the data.
Checking sales of a new wedding magazine, we were surprised to have sold six copies in a week. A 33% sell-through of a wedding title in a week in our demographic is excellent. The same check revealed we have had a copy stolen. That’s not such good news. I know from data I see at my software company that theft, shrinkage the experts call it, costs an average newsagency between 3% and 5% of turnover. While we mainly focus on processes to protect against employee theft, it is valuable to be reminded that customers can and do lift product.
Sure, other magazines are stolen – these are often away from the main traffic area. They are also smaller. This title is big – certainly not something you could slip inside a jacket or into a newspaper.
Maybe we need to frisk customers as they leave.
Young People and the News is an interesting report by Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The report speaks to a key challenge for newspapers:
… young Americans are estranged from the daily newspaper and rely more heavily on television than on the Internet for their news. A few decades ago, there were not large differences in the news habits and daily information levels of younger and older Americans. Today, unlike most older Americans, many young people find a bit of news here and there and do not make it a routine part of their day.
The report is further evidence of why newspaper executives and others speaking with newsagents about future trends ought to be more open about the data on which their corporations are making their plans for the future.
How can it be that there are so many esteemed commentators challenging the future of a key product category yet our suppliers say it is business as usual?
Australian newsagents ought to fear ignorance more than change.
I am curious as to why consolidation of newspaper territories is slow in Sydney compared to Melbourne and, to a lesser extent, Brisbane. It may have something to do with the different approaches being taken by publisher representatives in Sydney.
If publishers want to encourage consolidation of newspaper home delivery territories they need to be flexible in how they view the retail newsagent. They also need to better reward the distribution newsagent who is investing in the consolidation. A visit to Melbourne to review the approach of the last two years would provide an excellent blueprint.
It appears that some publisher executives want to control too much in some states. Smart newsagent operators prefer commercial arrangements which reward growth.
To ensure proper management of funds, Macedone Christie Willis Solarie Partners, the lawyers representing Corie and Tammy Schwarzl – the Supanews franchisees who lost their business to Supanews without compensation – have established guidelines which will be available to any newsagent contributing to the costs of mounting a case. See this earlier post on the matter.
The prospect of Federal Court action is, I am told, causing some challenges within the Supanews Retail Group – the new business formed by the old Supanews (members of the Gaskin family), and the Pacific Equity Partners owned Angus and Robertson / Whitcoulls group. My understanding is that some senior A&R people are most concerned at the potential for damage to the reputation of their respected business. Franchisee disputes can become messy and personal.
Regardless of your view as to whether several Supanews franchisee stores have fallen over or been pushed, the Supanews model is challenged. The focus of a Federal Court case against Supanews by the Schwarzls will help various stakeholder focus their minds on the structure and its operations.
Donation to the fund can be made by direct contact with their lawyers.
We have been carbon neutral in our newsagency for six months now. Not much has changed in a practical sense as we were always careful on recycling, purchasing green power etc. At least by purchasing carbon offsets we have a commercial understanding of our carbon emissions. Easy being green, the organisation we are working through, has provided some excellent material to help.
I’d encourage other newsagents to take the step. It’s a good community move.
Blanket is a new magazine in the Art and Design category. It comes out of Brisbane. What is most interesting about Blanket is that it is an online only publication.
With sales of print magazines in the same category flat or falling, an online model makes sense. Given the online focus and target demographic, it is appropriate that Blanket has a MySpace page.
Newsagents need to see that the magazine space is changing, Blanket is proof of that ever if it a special interest title. The best place for newsagents to respond to magazine changes is in our in-store fixturing – less but better designed space should help us boost sales from fewer titles.
Watch Blanket and the other online only models launching regularly.
Jon Fine, blogging at BusinessWeek, asks: Which American Paper Will Be The First To Kill Its Print Edition? In his article in the magazine, Fine picks the San Francisco Chronicle. Both the blog and article are essential reading for newsagents and their publisher suppliers. The discussion challenges the views put by publisher representatives speaking at newsagent meetings in recent months.
No, I am not gloomy about the future of newspapers. Realistic is what I would call it. By understanding the changes coming, newsagents will be better equipped to make the business decisions which best suit their businesses. Newsagents have to put their needs ahead of those of their suppliers.
Change can be liberating.
