Gordon and Gotch, in their wisdom, decided to not allocate us any copies of the new Inspector Morse partworks released this week by Bissett Magazines. We discovered that we had been left out of this opportunity when the Gotch merchandiser visited us yesterday to put up a display. Our enquiries revealed that this was not a missed delivery by Gotch – they had not allocated any of this new partwork series to us.
We escalated the issue through Gotch and were asked later in the day by Gotch representative if we would like to be put on their list of newsagents who support partworks and therefore want good quantities of new releases. We were surprised to discover that such a list exists. Our partworks interest has been well established, or so we thought. Consider this:
I have blogged here before and spoken at newsagent conferences about the importance of partworks to newsagents – urging newsagents to take up partworks.
I have shared sales data with Gotch management about the efficiency of partworks customers – baskets with partwork product are more efficient than almost any other category we carry.
Ben Kay, Manager of my newsagency, and I have met with Peter Bissett, owner of Bissett Magazines, and discussed partworks at length and out commitment.
Ben and I have had discussions up and down Gotch chasing more and more partworks product , impressing on them the sales we can achieve with the right stock. These discussions have been from the GM down.
Through my software company, Tower Systems, we created some exclusive partworks specifics enhancements and advised the folk at Gotch and Bissett about these – enhancements which help newsagents better manage partworks with a view to better customer service and lower time cost management. The enhancements were delivered to Tower Newsagents free.
I launched the newsagency industry’s first ever magazine loyalty card in 2004 in part as a result of our partworks success and to drive even greater success. Gotch was made aware of this at the time.
Peter Bissett recently brought a UK executive to our store (and others) to show best practice.
Our commitment to partworks is absolute. We only wish we had more new releases to promote.
This time around like others Gotch will blame others, Bissett will blame others. In the meantime TV hits, customers come to us looking for the product, we look like hopeless retailers and we lose them to someone else. These are sales worth fighting for.
Obviously someone at Gordon and Gotch is not across any of this so they cut us out of the Inspector Morse game.
And magazine distributors wonder why newsagents complain about them. Sure we will get Inspector Morse. The ‘system’ which took us off the list is flawed and no one cares enough to fix it.
Footnote: I wrote this blog entry last night but did not click PUBLISH. Just as well as today I’ve been able to edit out some of the more colourful passages. The facts are colourful enough without me needing use more robust language to make my point here. Maybe I should have slept on the email I sent to Gotch but then maybe they will understand how upset people like me get when we are denied an opportunity to do what our newsagencies have been created to do.
Quick Stick labels are another good habit based product for newsagents. They’re a strong brand, easily merchandised and support a good retail story without a chunky stock investment. We’re finding that Quick Stick customers are likely to return – hence the ‘habit’ tag. We’re also finding that Quick Stick sales are rarely single item sales. That is, people buy a box of labels and other products or they buy multiple boxes of labels.
We’ve received a note from