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

Author: Mark Fletcher

Tattslotto internet sales jackpot

tattersalls_online.JPGAt least one division 1 and six division 2 winners in Saturday night’s Lotto draw bought their tickets online.

I say “at least” because Tattersalls does not indicate if winners purchased online. The data I have is from the Golden Casket office. I wouldn’t be surprised if they stop publishing the number of prizes won through internet sales – especially if newsagents and other retail lottery agents step uyp their pressure against Tattersalls and other lottery businesses driving sales from the retail channel to online.

The belief in luck being what it is, the win on Saturday night will drive online lottery sales.

The graphic is from the Tattersalls website. There is no doubt about their desire to drive lottery sales online. As a lottery retailer, one who invests significant real-estate, labour and management time in supporting their brand, I’d prefer that they equally supported their retail network and offered a way for m to share in the mutual success of the online venture.

0 likes
Lotteries

Age newspaper masthead desecration

The Age newspaper today has another stuck on ad across the masthead on page one:

age_june05_before.JPG

Here is the damage caused by lifting the Commonwealth Bank Mastercard ad from the masthead:

age_june05_after.JPG

There are two slight tears along the lines of the adhesive. I can’t tell what Epicure “goes”. I can’t see the second person in the photo on the right.

There are not many professional newspaper people who would put advertising revenue ahead of their newspaper product in this way.

0 likes
newspaper masthead desecration

ANF Conference feedback

I spent this morning at the ANF Conference on the Gold Coast. Part of that time was delivering a presentation on using best practice IT to navigate to the newsagency of the future. The mood at the conference was upbeat with newsagents keen to talk about moves they are making in their businesses in pursuit of a brighter future.

Unfortunately I had to return to Melbourne this afternoon for a couple of important meetings. This is a crazy busy time at Tower Systems at present, which is great, and the day off between main ANF conference days is too much time away for me so I will fly back into the Gold Coast for my second presentation first thing Wednesday.

0 likes
Uncategorized

Newsagency of the future

I delivered the first of two workshops at the Australian Newsagents’ Federation’s Convention on the Gold Coast this morning. My topic was using best practice IT to navigate to the newsagency of the future.

Tom Carter, a newsagent in South Australia, was the first person I ever heard talk about the need for us to consider the newsagency of the future and that was years ago. The business he owns with his wife, June, is one of the examples in my presentation. I have blogged about it here before.

It seems to me that newsagents are like the deer staring in the headlights. Many are paralysed by fear of what they see in front of them. Newsagents know that newspaper sales are flat or falling, magazines the same, lotteries starting to move online and stationery sales being chased by every person and their dog.

While the bright lights of this reality stop most, there are some good examples of newsagents using technology to drive extraordinarily successful businesses. Rather than spending too long on a grand plan, these entrepreneurial newsagents are evolving their businesses today and with excellent success. In my presentation I talk about four businesses – yes there are plenty more than that – including June and Tom Carter’s newsagency in Adelaide.

Many newsagents, the ones staring at the headlights, are waiting for answered to be delivered to them. These are the newsagents most at risk.

The call to action of my presentation to the ANF Convention today and again on Wednesday is that the newsagency of the future is here, now, in our newsagencies and that all it takes is for us to use our IT systems – regardless of the brand – to cultivate data to guide our decisions.

The hour long presentation barely opens the door on consideration of the newsagency of the future. It’s likely I’ll develop an expanded presentation to share with newsagents elsewhere later this year.

Footnote: There are some who called on me to not attend the ANF convention because of the war between the ANF and the state newsagent associations in Queensland and New South Wales. I accepted the invitation from the ANF mid way through 2006, during a moment of peace, when I spoke at the QNF State Conference on a similar topic. Given the 1,400+ newsagents in the Tower Systems community, I felt it appropriate to accept the invitation and encourage newsagents to become more entrepreneurial.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

10 obvious things about the future of newspapers

10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head is a blog post newsagents (Australian retailers and distributors of newspapers) must read. While it is written more for publishers, it goes to the heart of the newsagent challenge – embracing change in the distribution and retail of newspapers.

Too many newsagents are kidding themselves that the newspaper game will not change and that their businesses can motor on in bliss.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Newspaper masthead obscured (again)

GIO would have to be happy with obscuring The Age newspaper masthead today. It is a pity that Fairfax, publisher of The Age, rates ad revenue ahead of one of the most respected newspaper brands in the country.

age_june04.JPG

These stuck on ads create a trash problem around the stores where newspapers are sold.

0 likes
Newspapers

Should Australia Post be sold?

The Sydney Morning Herald website published a report late today saying Australia Post would be worth $7 billion if it were sold off. While I would like to see the Government get out of owning and running a retail chain, it would be inappropriate to sell the Australia Post government owned stores to a single big player who could easily leverage the monopoly backed brand into even tougher competition against newsagents.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am pro competition. But fair competition. Australia Post leverages its Government protected monopoly to land traffic in its own corporate stores for less than newsagents; they have moved in on newsagent stationery and other sales for a lower acquisition cost per customer; they have leveraged their Government footprint to an unfair lease, stock and conditions situation. If Australia Post were to compete fairly

The SMH says Australia Post’s community service obligations cold be a sticking point to any sale. I’d observe that Australia Post has paid scant regard to aspects of the legislation under which it operates so why start being concerned about these things now?

0 likes
Australia Post

Newsagents pitch stationery deals

We are actively supporting the newsXpress branded GNS Mid Year stationery sale with this display on the “dance floor” of our shop. Every customer walks past this. Note the stand we’re using right in front of the Reflex copy paper with the newsXpress branded catalogues.

stationery_promo.JPG

While the Mid Year Sale is available to all newsagents, our point of difference is the newsXpress branding and marketing group support. We have the GNS prepared catalogues (under newsXpress brand) plus we have backup support materials designed to drive sales – additional in store promotional strategies and exclusive marketing support.

0 likes
Stationery

Water and cards don’t mix

We had more flooding dramas on Friday as a result the construction going on in our shopping centre. This time the problem was right above our greeting card store room. Our entire backup stock was wiped out as well as new season stock. We are yet to hear from the landlord about compensation for the flood damage from two weeks ago and the resulting severe disruption to the business.

0 likes
Greeting Cards

International newspaper sales

newspaper_direct.JPGCatching up on my brief time in Thailand this week and came across this photo I took at Bangkok airport. It’s a stand right next to the counter. They print and bag current editions of international newspapers under the Newspaper Direct banner. It’s in an ideal location and in my brief time in the shop I saw three papers sold.

I’ve seen these Newspaper Direct stands plenty of times but the newspapers were not in sealed plastic bags like in Bangkok. It’s a good idea.

I know of a couple of Australian newsagents playing in this space – not sure how it’s going. For my money I prefer to connect with Australian news online when I travel – it’s more up to date and cheaper.

0 likes
Newspaper marketing

Life as a sub agent

BRW_rich_list.JPGI know that publishers are concerned about the increasing number of newsagents selling their home delivery business and retaining the retail operation. The concern arises from the changed relationship when the retail outlet moves to sub agent status. The key to retail only newsagents providing support on a par with when they were not sub agents lies in the management of the relationship by the supplying newsagent, the retailer and the publisher.

While I don’t like the promotions which seek to reduce my retail sales in favour of home delivery, I still participate. For example, yesterday we gave away a Herald Sun promotional bag with every Herald Sun sold. The goal of the promotion was to drive home delivery uptake.

Another example is the bold BRW display we have done to support the BRW Rich List special edition. The aisle end is a prime location and most sub agents would not give over such real-estate freely. We do because we see it as a way of demonstrating our relevance to titles which are in the news. So it’s a win win.

This issue of how to handle newsagents who become sub agents needs to be addressed at a high level between newsagents and publishers. It is increasing and some guidelines could avoid disputes and facilitate more the win win I am talking about.

0 likes
magazines

Ads before the newspaper masthead

The Age and Tattersalls are supporting their cross-promotion with an ad stuck on today’s newspaper masthead. So much for promoting the content of the newspaper.

age_june02.JPG

The continued use of these front page newspaper mast head ads demonstrates that editorial is not in control of the product.

0 likes
Newspaper marketing

Broadband, newspapers and sheep dags

Alan Mutter is, among other things, a blogger passionate about journalism and technology. I referred in a post yesterday to his post about the challenges to the newspaper model. Alan was in New Zealand in March and posted about the problems of poor and expensive broadband coverage. He also labels NZ newspaper websites as being from the 1990s.

If Alan Mutter were to visit Australia he would be even more critical of our broadband coverage. It is slow, expensive and patchy in its geographic spread. How we are expected to be competitive with such poor infrastructure is a question which must be asked of politicians. While it suits me as a retail newsagent because I will benefit from a slower migration online, I get the reality that news and information will shift online – it provides me with an opportunity to reinvent business.

Our politicians MUST fix the broadband mess and quickly. The cost to the economy of our businesses getting left behind because of poor broadband policy will be extraordinary.

What Mutter would like, I suspect, is our newspaper websites. The Fairfax offering is among the best in the world. News Ltd is catching up. Outside of these giants, we also have great sites such as Perth Norg showing what independents can do. Our sites are certainly better than those in New Zealand. We also have a robust online classifieds community including the Find It offering I am behind.

The news and information sites in Australia ought to be a motivator to newsagents to act on their own futures. For that to happen we need to collectively lift our heads out of the sand and see what is happening – slow broadband or not.

Alan also blogs eloquently and humorously about “dags“.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Tattersalls and The Age promote together

tattersalls_age.jpgThe Age and Tattersalls have banded together. Anyone purchasing a Tatts card gets a four week weekend subscription to The Age free.

As a retail only newsagent it is frustrating that I may lose some of my Saturday and Sunday sales of The Age. What is in this for me?

Since this promotion is really about boosting Tatts Card sales I’d like to see a robust reward for newsagency employees who make this campaign a success.

As the promotion currently stands I would not expect a big uptake. We will promote it through posters and brochures as required but the feeling among our team is that connecting The Age with Tattersalls products is not the best cross promotion they could run.

0 likes
Lotteries

Great ad foodland

Take a look at the brilliant full page ad Foodland ran in The Advertiser in Adelaide last week.

foodland.JPG

We have run a similar but much smaller campaign across the counter of our newsXpress newsagency using flyers. The customer support against the behemoths of supermarkets, petrol outlets and c-stores is excellent. Australians want small businesses to thrive.

Newsagents ought to consider such a campaign promoting their retail channel. It’s not a new proposal. I put it forward in 2002 and had 150 newsagents offer support. None of the newsagent suppliers would get behind it nor did the associations at the time. Maybe it is time to revisit such a campaign. However, I suspect that this is now best executed at the marketing group level where discipline can be managed.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Newspaper front page advertising

The American Journalism Review has an good article by Donna Shaw about ore advertising getting onto the front pages of newspapers.

Page-one ads may net premium prices, but they’re distasteful to many journalists who believe they violate the purity of page one and the sacred wall between news and business. From a design standpoint, they can detract from the flow and order of a page. They also eat up space that otherwise could be devoted to stories, particularly in an era of dwindling newsholes.

I wonder what Shaw would make of the post-it type ads which Fairfax sticks on their mastheads here in Australia. These stuck on ads are more intrusive than front page ads.

0 likes
Newspapers

Newsagency training for IT people

Daniel Kenny joined Tower Systems on Monday of this week to work out of our Brisbane office. Dan has spent time this week working behind the counter at our newsXpress Forest Hill store. I bought this newsagency in February 1996 to provide practical experience to me and the team at Tower as we pursued better software for newsagents. Daniel is the latest of many from the Tower Systems team to be trained at Forest Hill. Usually, new team members like Daniel have several stints at Forest Hill before we let them loose with clients. This practical experience augments the more formal training in our software and serves to provide valuable context for what we do.

0 likes
Uncategorized

Online vs newspapers

In $2B in newspaper print ads periled, Alan Mutter has an excellent post about the challenges to the print newspaper model. While the perspective and numbers are from the US, they relate to the Australian experience except that we are behind in terms of online migration and benefiting – in terms of publisher action – from this. As Mutter says:

Publishers may get away with short-changing loyal newspaper readers for a time, if they can successfully reposition their businesses, rapidly recover their profitability and use some of the new earnings to refurbish their tattered core products. Failure to do so, however, may irretreivably damage a business that once seemed so preternaturally invulnerable.

Newsagents need to read what Mutter and others have to say to be fully informed in planning for their future. By understanding the position of publishers we can better set our own direction.

Paul Gillin has written an excellent article on the consequences of what Mutter had blogged about.

My concern is that newsagents don’t get it. They don’t understand the iceberg in front of them and the impact on their business whey they hit it. Publishers do and are reacting. Newsagents, however, are expecting publishers and other old media partners to “look after” them.

This has been on my mind as I prepare my presentation for the ANF Convention next week on the Gold Coast. I’ll be talking about the Newsagency of the Future with a focus on IT best practice providing a roadmap. But more on that here another time.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Suppliers keen to access the newsagency channel

Every few days I hear from a manufacturer, importer or some other supplier keen to access the newsagency channel. Some express frustration with existing supply chain access points while others are not aware of the various supply chains serving newsagents.

What is interesting to me is their keenness to connect with newsagents. They like our geographic spread and the traffic they see in our stores. Some of these potential newsagent suppliers have excellent products just waiting to connect with a strong national network of stores. The key is achieving that access at a low price so that everyone involves makes a fair return.

I have a standard approach which includes being transparent about the various channels to our stores: warehouses, distributors and the like.

The most exciting approaches come from people making products unlike any we have seen in newsagencies before yet which suit our customers and fit within existing categories. I appreciate that I am not being specific in detailing products – in many cases I agree to confidentiality so that appropriate arrangements can be negotiated.

It would be good for the industry to establish a supplier entry point and bring some structure to these approaches. While groups such as newsXpress can do it for its 110 members, there are some products which are more appropriate to mass roll out.

0 likes
Uncategorized

Felicity Wishes goes gangbusters

We sold out of the 80 copies of issue #1 of Felicity Wishes which we received last week. Now we’re well into the extra 30 we received yesterday. Besides our window display we have this display at the counter:

felicity_wishes.JPG

Partworks are efficient for us – we sign them up for putaways. The effort in making sure we have enough stock is paying off. We use them to reinforce that we have fresh product. That and the fact that they are advertised on TV as exclusuive to newsagents.

0 likes
partworks

Dialtime phone recharge drives Tower sales

Being first has its rewards. Newsagents are choosing Tower Systems software because of a commercial advantage exclusively delivered months ago.

Earlier this year, following extensive testing, we released a live link from within our newsagency point of sale software for the sale of Dialtime phone recharge vouchers. This means that our newsagent clients can sell Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, 3 Mobile and Virgin mobile phone top up from any register in their store. They can also sell many different calling cards from their POS registers.

What is clever about this is that at the sales counter a newsagent employee can hit a couple of touch screen buttons and in a second or two the voucher with the recharge serial number is printed. Our software links real-time to Dialtime, transacts the voucher and delivers it to the receipt printer in the newsagency. We’re saving between 30 and 90 seconds a transaction. With some newsagencies doing between 50 and 100 transactions a day the time saving is significant.

The benefits for newsagents are that they no longer have to queue at the one Dialtime terminal at their counter for these sales and there is less room of data re-keying error. By integrating within our POS software, newsagents save time, enjoy the process more and are happy to sell more mobile phone recharge and calling card product.

This is another Tower Advantage for newsagents.

0 likes
Uncategorized

Magazine Week a good idea

I like the idea of Magazine Week, as planned for the UK in September this year, to promote magazines to consumers. This is something the Magazine Publishers of Australia could get behind. Newsagents ought to be at the heart of any campaign as they are the only magazine specialists in Australia.

Check out the planned in store activity:

1. Point of sale branding to create in-store theatre
2. Window dressing using Magazine Week branding
3. Shopping messages, each day a different message
4. Meet and greet with staff at the front of the store, e.g. staff wearing branded t-shirts
5. Rotation of magazines on a gondola daily
6. Till receipts to hold logo (contact PPA for logo)
7. Shopping message, each day a different one e.g. “Buy a magazine – and one for your mum!”; “If you like gardening, why not look at our great range of gardening magazines”; “It’s the weekend – buy a magazine and relax!”
8. Voucher incentives (included in regional press, local flyer campaigns etc.)
9. Using every communication vehicle (both staff and customer facing)
10. Targeted leaflets to consumers – using Magazine Week to fulfil individual store objectives (e.g. promoting shop save; highlighting expanded magazine range etc)
11. Out of Category PoS / Out of category positioning of magazines
12. Using clubcard/loyalty card promotion (or equivalent)
13. Any other ideas you might have!

Brilliant! I’d actively support this among the 1,400+ newsagents using Tower Systems software to manage magazines. From a marketing group perspective, many of the activities connect with existing in-store strategies in newsXpress stores.

0 likes
magazines
Trending Articles

Fairfax changes approach to TV Guide, disrespects newsagents

Published on April 20, 2011

What do you think of the Powerball changes?

Published on February 16, 2018

IPS releases new magazine contracts

Published on June 21, 2011