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

Author: Mark

News shuts Alpha magazine

News Limited today announced that the June issue of Alpha magazine would be the last. The magazine has struggled since they disconnected it from News Ltd newspapers and changed the revenue model for retailers.  That said, it is disappointing when any magazine closes.

The bad news in today’s announcement by News is that the company has licensed specialist titles (and associated websites) Modern Fishing, Modern Boating, Overlander 4WD, Truckin’ Life, Live To Ride, 2Wheels, Chopper, Tattoo and Scooter to Express Publications.  I label this bad news because of Express bags much of what it distributes and sends old issues out with new, leaving newsagents to carry the cost of sending back the old stock so that it can be re-bagged and sent back out. Hopefully, Express will not condemn these titles to bagging.

Click here for the story in The Australian.

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magazine distribution

Coming out of Mother’s Day

With Mother’s Day over, there is a gap before the Mid Year Sale, if you do that, and Father’s Day.  This is a terrific opportunity for newsagents to try new things and to reinvent their retail space.

Here are some suggestions looking for opportunities over the coming weeks:

  1. Run your own Mid Year Sale.  Get together everything you want to quit and price it to quit.
  2. Maybe get products together and run a winter sale.
  3. Expand your lines.  Start experimenting with some new lines.  If you are not sure where to start look at card and magazine sales.  In data for each is guidance as to other products you could sell.
  4. Move departments to the front.  Consider bringing to the front of the shop departments which are buried in the back of the shop.  Let passers by know that you have these items.
  5. Develop a roster of magazine promotions.  Use the front of the newsagency to promote magazine categories which don’t often get a run at the front of the shop yet which benefit from exposure: food, wedding, crafts, sports.
  6. Refresh.  Clean out your window and start again.  Take everything off your counter and create a cleaner more focused offer.

These are suggestions designed to get you thinking about your own opportunities.

Too many newsagents act as servants, responding to supplier direction.  Right now there is an opportunity for you to take charge and make some smart moves in your newsagency.

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Newsagency opportunities

The federal government competes with newsagents, again

dsc03444.JPGThe Mother’s Day catalogue from the federal government owned Australia Post shops was out to take sales from newsagents and other independent family-owned retailers.  The catalogue offers Mother’s Day cards, cookbooks, novels, CDs, DVDs, notepaper, gift pens, a sewing machine (yes, seriously!), photo frames, cameras, phones, computer mouse … all sorts of products which have absolutely nothing to do with providing a postal service.

That we have more than 800 government owned retail shops selling these items which are readily available in privately owned retail businesses is appalling.

Successive federal governments of various political leanings have allowed the Australia Post elephant to get bigger and bigger, to wreak more damage on family owned businesses like newsagencies.  As I have blogged before, I contend that the act under which Australia Post operates is being breached by their reach into non postage products and services.

None of these politicians, labour and Liberal, can claim good small business credentials when they allow Australia Post to hurt newsagents and other small family run businesses in this way.

We are the average Australians they all so often claim to serve yet they fail us by allowing the Australia Post elephant to get bigger by taking business from independent retailers.

What do I want? I want Australia Post to get out of being a general retailer and to go back to focusing on postage stamps, postal services and products which very specially relate to these two areas.   sadly, we don’t have politicians with the balls to make this happen.  The result will be more jobs lost.

Australia Post government owned stores are doing more damage to our independent and privately owned retail channel that the proposed carbon tax and any other government initiative newsagents currently have issue with.

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Australia Post

And they complain about newsagent compliance!

Newsagents are often labeled by both magazine distributors and some publishers as offering poor compliance.  I was on five supermarkets over the weekend and every one had titles from Pacific magazines in their ACP Magazines funded Royal Wedding stand.  They had ACP Royal Wedding stock elsewhere in-store whch could have filled the slots.

While I think it makes sense to chase sales for the overall category rather than one supplier versus another, supermarket performance around this stand is a good way of measuring their compliance.  In the five supermarkets I visited the compliance was poor,

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magazines

Selling Royal Wedding magazines

weddingmagsmay8.JPGThis is the display we have been running at the counter since Friday.  In the foreground you can see the range of wedding related titles for easy impulse purchase.  Behind this, on the wall directly behind the counter you can see the bigger format display promoting the wedding titles we have in-store.

We have have a display right on the lease line facing into the mall, wedding titles with our weeklies display as well as wedding titles doward the rear of the magazine department with women’s titles.

We are running with a policy of buying sock from elsewhere if we run low.  We will not sell out for the next few days at least.  That is the plan.

the counter placement is working very well for us.  You can see the moment when people see one or two titles and think I should grab one of these.

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magazines

Great promotion from Mildura Living magazine publisher

milduraliving.JPGCheck out the help provided by the publisher of Mildura Living to newsXpress Klemms Mildura for promoting their magazine.

With good pull up banners costing as little as $200 (and even less), they are a cost effective and valuable way for promoting products like magazines.  The banners can be easily moved – providing more flexibility that the more traditional magazine display in a newsagency or other retail business. They can also be easily incorporated into displays or places next to product displays as shown in the photo.

I’d like to see more publishers provide marketing collateral like this for Mildura Living.I am sure that newsagents would welcome and use it – as we are seeing in Mildura.

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magazines

Fairfax Media TV Guide Cost Benefit Analysis

NANA has developed a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) spreadsheet with the aim of the final information for presentation to Fairfax Media (FM), showing the true costs of the TV Guide insert process. FM will be given the invitation to review any of the figures which are presented. At all times Newsagent anonymity will be maintained, unless the Newsagent gives written permission to NANA for Fairfax Media to review a specific Newsagents’ data.

An early determination, from limited input, has revealed that this process would be a multimillion dollar loss across NSW Newsagents. Therefore, the importance of participating in this evaluation, for the full 5 week period, cannot be overemphasised. It is for your benefit and clearly elicits the dollar impact on your business.

To obtain the spreadsheet, relevant to your version of Excel, go to the NANA website www.nana.com.au and also read this article in full.

I have published this information from NANA with their permission.

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newspaper home delivery

EPAL responds on EFTPOS issue

Click here to see a letter I received yesterday from my local member of parliament after he raised the EFTPOS issue on my behalf.  It is a letter to him from Bruce Mansfield, CEO of Eftpos Payments Australia Limited.  It is the same letter Mansfield has sent to others who have complained about this issue.

Mansfield peddles his spin beautifully, almost believably.  Oh, it is not us.  And … newsagents have control.  No, we don’t.

In the letter, Mansfield says that newsagent can mange the mix of transactions and through this the EFTPOS fees.  He clearly has not spent any time working in a newsagency.  If he had he would not have made such an ignorant statement.

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EFTPOS fees

Chris Lilley selling magazines

chris-lilley1.JPGOur team at Knox has placed the latest issue of The Monthly at the counter next to triple j magazine.  The two Chris Lilley covers work well together.  Yesterday, not long after creating this display, a customer purchased both titles purely on the strength of the Chris Lilley cover stories.  I’d encourage newsagents to consider copying this approach at their counters.  Lilley is receiving a ton of publicity at the moment for his forthcoming TV show.  No other retailer will promote these titles in this way.

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magazines

Promoting MasterChef magazine with co-location

masterchef2.JPGIn addition to tactical placement of the new MasterChef magazine display unit, we have been promoting the title with this aisle end display in-store, facing shoppers as they enter our magazine department.

Unit sales of food titles in our newsagency were up 182% in April 2011 compared to 2010.  While it is the fifth best category in terms of year on year growth, the growth number achieved is still extraordinary.  Part of that success is due to the MasterChef title – hence our preparedness to invest time and prime space in promotion.

I recently asked whether food titles were losing their appeal.  I don’t think so, not across the board at least.

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magazines

QNF Board to seek compensation over Royal Wedding magazine supply issues

The QNF Board is to meet with Eugene Varricchio, Group General Manager – Retail & Distribution, ACP Magazine on Tuesday next week to discuss the why newsagents were disadvantaged compared to other retail channels over the supply of Woman’s Day and the Australian Women’s Weekly.  The QNF Board will also seek to discuss these points as outlined to QNF members this late today:

Firstly, monetary reimbursement crediting the wholesale cost of all quantities of these two Royal Wedding magazines received by Queensland newsagents or by discounting subsequent issues to similar value.  In the case of newsagents who were not delivered any Woman’s Day or Australian Woman’s Weekly they should receive the profit they would normally receive each week/month.

Secondly, ACP to formulate in consultation with the QNF, a special Queensland newsagents promotion which will drive consumers back into our newsagents businesses.

It’s a gutsy move by the QNF to not only seek compensation but to disclose this to newsagents at this stage.

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magazine distribution

Handling the Body+Soul $2.00 discount

News Magazines is running an online promotion for Body+Soul magazine with the new issue allowing online customers to purchase the magazine for $4.95 rather than $6.95.  Here is some advice for the newsagents using the newsagency software from Tower Systems for handling this:

Add a new stock item (with a generated/Alt+G barcode) called “Body+Soul Coupon Offer” with a PLU of BSCO and a price of $2. When a customer comes in with the coupon, scan Body & Soul into POS, do a qty of -1, then enter the PLU BSCO. This will sell the coupon item for -$2.00, which will bring the sale total down to $4.95. You’ll also be able to Alt+T the BSCO item at the end of the promotion and see how many coupons were redeemed (the QOH will be a negative value of however many redemptions there were).  This will be the value you claim back through Gordon and Gotch.

Hopefully, the online promotion drives newsagency traffic for this title.

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magazines

Another example of a flawed magazine distribution model

sudoku-overload.JPGI can’t work out why Gordon and Gotch decided to increase our supply of this imported Sudoku title from 6 to 11.  Sure we sold out of 6 with the December 2010 issue and they increased us to 7 for the next issue of which we sold 6.  A smart allocation would have been to hold us at 7 for several issues before increasing again.  or, they they had to increase supply because of floor stock which they had to send somewhere, why not an increase to 8? This increase to 11 has no justification despite the excuses which I sure the folks at Gotch will have.

This happens often to newsagents, an increase in volume for the slimmest of reasons. I think it is due to a flawed supply mode.  If I only had to pay when I sold a title, did not have to pay for returns freight and was compensated when a title did not achieve reasonable sell-through I am sure that this type of oversupply would not occur.

Magazine distributors tell publishers that newsagents have control over what we receive.  This is not true.

Every single extra magazine copy sent to newsagents which is well beyond what we need has a real and intangible cost.  It sucks our resources and our attention from products which could sell.

It is the work associated with magazine oversupply, even a few copies like with this Sudoku title, which diverts our attention from better selling titles.  Newsagents as well as publishers of better selling are the losers from this supply model.

While I acknowledge that magazine distributors have an excuse for most situations of what I would call oversupply, the facts of continued oversupply tell a different story.

Magazine publishers of more successful and carefully supplied titles need to work more closely with newsagents on the abuse of the newsagency channel through magazine oversupply.

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magazine distribution

Promoting Cosmopolitan Bride

cosmobridemay11.JPGWe have been promoting Cosmopolitan Bride with this aisle end display along with placement with our bridal titles.  We have allocated week or the display as space is in high demand and, frankly, we are getting a better short term response from some of our lower volume wedding titles – people are looking for something difference and newsagents are well placed to serve this need.

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magazines

Fairfax delays implemenation of TV Guide changes

Fairfax has this evening contacted NANA President Andrew Packham and advised that they will delay the implementation of the delivery changes for the TV Guide for a week.  They will post details on the Connect site for newsagents.  NANA will have more to say about this tomorrow.

Hopefully, commonsense will prevail and Fairfax will take on board the details of challenges associated with their proposed TV Guide move as articulated y NANA, the ANF and many newsagents through forums like this place and not proceed at all.

Click here for the original post and all the comments by newsagents.

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newspaper home delivery

Were supermarkets treated better than newsagents with Woman’s Day Royal Wedding magazine stock?

royalwedding-super.JPGNewsagents are frustrated that they have been unable to access sufficient Woman’s Day stock this week to meet demand while nearby supermarkets have had plenty of stock of this popular issue.

Newsagents I know received an increase of between 15% to 16% in supply of Woman’s Day.  One major supermarket representative I spoke with said they received an increase of 45%, claiming this was across the board.

If these numbers accurately reflect allocations for the Woman’s Day Royal Wedding issue, newsagents have every right to be frustrated.

I understand that the Royal Wedding presented unique and considerable challenges to ACP and other publishers.  It also presented tremendous opportunities for all of us in the magazine supply chain to do good business and attract some new customers with a hope that some of these would stick.

I would like disclosure of the allocations increase for supermarkets and newsagents for Woman’s Day.  I would like to know if supermarkets received an allocations increase more than twice the size of that provided to newsagents.

I visited a Woolworths supermarket early yesterday morning and took this photo of their display.  While they had sold out of Woman’s Day, this stand was full for almost two days as were plenty of other pockets in-store.  They did a bumper trade.  The nearby newsagent was out of stock from early Tuesday.

The photo is important for a few reasons – the amount of stock on display, the difference between this display and the display unit provided to newsagents and the terms under which this display was provided to supermarkets.

My supermarket contact told me that this display unit was placed at a cost to ACP, that the supermarket groups which took the display were paid a fee for the price location placement.  If true, this demonstrates a significant difference to the financial terms under which supermarkets trade for magazines compared to newsagents.  However, that it not my core concern.  No, my core concern is about stock.  We can’t sell what we don’t have.

Newsagents are told by magazine publishers that our channel is vitally important.   The allocations increase by ACP of Woman’s Day this week appears, if my numbers are accurate, to fly in the face of such claims.

We sell more magazines in our channel than any other single retail channel in Australia.  This should have seen us provided a bigger increase than a smaller channel, supermarkets.

The only way any newsagent supplier should demonstrate the value of our channel to their business is in their business decisions.  This is how newsagents should judge suppliers, by their actions.

ACP will say that it is easier to deal with supermarkets in that you can negotiate with a couple of national offices and cover off around 2,000 stores whereas with newsagents you have to deal with 4,000 owners for 4,000 stores.  While I can appreciate that, I ask at what cost?  What do supermarkets do for the suppliers – nothing unless they are paid.  What do newsagents do – plenty without being paid.  We do more to promote and engage with brands and magazines than supermarkets every day.

I am sure, too, that there are other factors at play here, factors which I will not see from my small business perspective.  ACP needs to do what it needs to do for its business.   Newsagents need to do what is right for our business.  If I am right on the allocations increase percentages for this week’s Woman’s Day then I don’t feel as strategic to ACP as I did a week ago.

If I was ACP, I would have backed newsagents ahead of supermarkets, with a 40% increase in supply.  I would have given supermarkets a 20% bump.  My justification would be that newsagents are more important to my future – they are more flexible, more engaged with my products, more important to the overall health of the magazine channel and cost me less to deal with.

I don’t know if the supermarkets asked for the 40% (or more) increase or if its was just offered.  The net result is that in this week of a huge spike in shopper engagement with magazines, newsagents were left looking like the poor cousins of supermarkets.  That is not a healthy situation for our businesses or for the magazine marketplace as a whole.

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magazine distribution

Promoting The Australian Women’s Weekly wedding special

wedding-knox.JPGCheck out the terrific display created by the team at my newsXpress Knox store promoting the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.   This display is one of four for the title in the store at the moment – we are making the most of the opportunity in the first few days when interest is at its peak.  We are committed to buying stock elsewhere to ensure that we can satisfy shopper demand.  We have taken this stand because of the challenges that the split delivery looks set to bring.  It is more important to us that we satisfy shopper demand and stop leakage to nearby supermarkets than it is to provide 100% accurate sales data to Network Services.

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magazines

Royal Wedding magazines on eBay

ebay-royal-wedding.jpgIt is interesting to see the New Idea Royal Wedding issue from this week on eBay already for $9.99 and the Woman’s Day pre Royal Wedding special on sale at $13.00.  Both are priced at a significant premium to retail prices.  Both titles are still available in newsagencies.  Good luck to the entrepreneurs behind these premium offers.

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magazines

Women’s Weekly split delivery hurts newsagents

I feel for newsagents on Queensland Country magazine distribution runs who are yet to receive the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.  Many are finding their local supermarket has stock while they, the competing newsagent, does not.  Newsagents are often told how important they are to magazine publishers.  This situation with supermarkets supplied while a neighboring newsagent is not demonstrates that words can be hollow.

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magazine distribution

How serious is Time about Australia?

time-wedding.JPGWe received two copies of the special commemorative issue of Time magazine this morning.  If ever the magazine was going to sell significantly more copies than usual it would be this issue … oh, and the Osama Bin Laden death special which is coming.  Why the people who manage allocations for Time did not increase supply, especially for proactive newsagents, is beyond me.  We have ordered ten extra copies.  I am confident we will see out of all twelve copies.

If Time is serious about growing sales in Australia it would have ensured that it had processes in place to make the most of the Royal Wedding opportunity.  It would also ensure that it makes the most of the Osama Bin laden opportunity.

So, I ask the question, how serious is Time about Australia?

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magazine distribution

Great Mother’s Day promotion from ACP

mothersdaypromo.jpgACP is running a terrific Mother’s Day promotion at their magshop.com.au subscription site.  Up for grabs is a trip to Italy valued at $25,000.  The headline is right, this is a ‘perfect Mother’s Day gift’.

I’d love to have been able to offer this type of prize in-store.  Entry could have been open to shoppers buying, say, three Mother’s Day related titles.  In other words, using the in-store campaign to encourage shoppers to purchase more than would usually be the case in a single visit.  I am certain that the campaign would have been commercially viable, delivering necessary incremental business.

ACP has a track record for running excellent promotions around major seasons through magshop.  From what I understand, they work very well, helping to deliver excellent incremental business.

Now before people think I am having a swipe at ACP, I do understand the role subscriptions play in the overall circulation mix.  ACP is doing what I would do if I were them.  That said, I think that they could look at more newsagency specific proportions – we are the more engaged and less expensive retail channel after all.

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Magazine subscriptions

Promoting triple j magazine

jjjmagmay2011.JPGWe have been promoting the triple J magazine at the counter with this simple yet tactical display for the past week.

We gave triple J this prime location because of the Chris Lilley cover, he has been in the news in the run up to the launch of his new TV series, and because the publisher is supporting newsagents in promoting the title.

We figured that it was important to promote the title outside of the usual music magazine location as it is likely to appeal to those who may not usually purchase it.

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magazines

More Justin Bieber stock helps drive sales

bieber-more.JPGWe were able to get more stock of the Justin Bieber one-shot from Pacific Magazines and so we recreated this simple tactical display at our counter.  It is already selling again.  I wonder how many other newsagents are doing this – chasing extra stock of a one-shot special interest title like this when it sells out.  Some newsagents I know refuse as they see the sell out as the end of their obligation. My view is that if I can make money by ordering more why not!  While Bieber’s star will wane (please!) I am happy to make money from good basket building impulse purchases by our customers.

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magazines

Hallmark TVC drives Mother’s Day traffic

The TV commercial by Hallmark cards promoting recordable Mother’s Day cards and the range of recordable story books is driving traffic.  It is terrific having people come in specifically as a result of the TVC.

These interactive products have delivered excellent results over the last couple of years. Expect to see more innovation around interactivity.

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Greeting Cards