I have seen few Easter Eggs in Easter displays in retail in the US despite obesity being a far greater problem here than in Australia. Easter candy is more regular candy repackaged and some marshmallow things called Peeps – not delicious marshmallow.
I have seen plenty of religious chocolate and while Easter is for many a religious season, I don’t understand the desire to eat Jesus chocolate.
We are not running with the usual eggs this Easter. Instead, we have sourced a range of funky chocolate items from local company Freckleberry. We tried their range at Christmas and it worked a treat. Customers loved having access to chocolate that is different. I think the same will be true with this Easter range. The products are well packaged, keenly priced, provide a good margin and fun.
If my newsagency was in a country town I’d probably have a more traditional offering but in a capital city shopping centre where Easter Eggs are well represented in at least twenty shops I’d prefer to have a different Easter chocolate offer. This fits well with our Easter cards, plush and gifts.
We’re not a one size fits all channel and that can be a challenge for some suppliers to understand. Easter is a good example of the differences in today’s newsagency businesses.
This photo shows the display of packaged sweets at the Zoodle store by WH Smith at Melbourne airport. I love the red and yellow striped canopy above the product as it draws attention to this rear-wall display. It visually anchors this department within the business. In fact, anchoring departments is done well in in this Zoodle shop. Browsers can easily identify each section. This is important in retail.
Take a look at your newsagency: do you have departments visually anchored? Are borders from one department to another clear? While it can be appealing to have departments and sections blend into each other, this can hinder the browsing experience and thereby affect revenue.
Attention given to shop layout can improve sales regardless of the age of the shop-fit.
Emily Hall, a UK journalist, told her 1,667 Twitter followers overnight that all newsagents should be forced to sell Curly Wurly chocolate bars. David Johns, an ITV broadcast journalist rewteeted Emily’s tweet to his 777 followers. I responded to Emily and this was copied to my 521 Twitter followers as well as Emily’s followers. I mention this to illustrate how tweets spread, how we can engage with Twitter to talk more about newsagents and newsagency businesses, to ensure our relevance to those using social media. I also mention it to show how we can humanise who we are and what we do. Plus responding was fun. I love the Curly Wurly chocolate bars.
I must have missed the arrival in Australia of the Thorntons chocolate range. Thorntons is a strong UK brand with stand-alone stores – 296 shops and 186 franchises – and a good presence in a range of other retail businesses. The photo is a Thorntons product I noticed in a Coles supermarket, as part of their Easter range. We are seeing a surge in UK brands and retailers arriving in Australia and this leads me to wonder if Thorntons will open here. Thorntons products I have tried in the UK were excellent.
Three days ago we put out a new range of Christmas-themed chocolate. Stars, trees, words – Merry, Xmas, Thanks, Wish – and some other tasty Christmas treats. Space constraints limited our display options but that has not stopped the range selling. Customers are loving the point of difference of this range. We love that!
Now more than ever in newsagency businesses we need to seek our new products and new suppliers to attract new shoppers as well as to offer more variety to existing shoppers.
Something I love to hear from a customer is: I never expected to see that in a newsagency.
Some major retailers have boxed chocolates under popular game brands: Scrabble, Monopoly and Twister. I have seen them in several stores this week – on the shop floor in a high traffic location.
Maybe I missed the opportunity from one of our suppliers. I’d love to have had these available for Christmas – especially Scrabble given the other gifts I can get with this popular brand.
Brands sell – I’ll take branded product over cheaper imitations any time. They carry a better margin and are more trusted by consumers.
I love the chocolate coffins I saw in the window of one chocolate show in downtown Auckland earlier this week. Their Halloween display was excellent. It was made up of a series of small displays like this chocolate coffin display. Talking to a team member in the shop they have become known for their themed displays. People come to look at them. The team members get to make suggestions.
This is an excellent example of making an independent and small retail business a destination. Outside of these window displays this is an average chocolate shop – not meaning to put them down. Their window displays separate them and make them a shop to visit, to see what they are up to.
They are generating destination traffic, the most valuable form of traffic a retailer can have.
Click on the image for a bigger version.
In one of my newsagencies confectionery is not strong enough to justify premium counter space so we have been trying more impulse purchase items. Our requirements are 50% GP or more, rapid turn and small footprint. These USB car chargers are ideal for our purpose – easily understood, good margin and good price point. We’re making more money from these than we make selling chocolate bars.
I appreciate our situation is not common in that most newsagents continue to enjoy success with chocolate at the counter. I expect that newsagencies in shopping centres will sell less confectionery in the future with the growth in convenience stores and stronger competition from new generation petrol outlets.
I like the new merchandise units from Darrell Lea, they’re modern, space efficient and visually attractive … a good advance on the old-school units from the previous owners of the brand. While there are frustrations with how the brand is being handled, I’m happy to endorse the good moves being made for retailers.
Last year when newsagents were encouraged to order Darrell Lea Dad’s Bags for sale in the lead up to Father’s Day this year they were told Australia Post would have the products including in corporate stores. What they were not told is that Australia Post would promote the Dad’s Bags on the front cover of their August catalogue.
I am certain there are newsagents will be shocked to discover the government is competing with them for what is an important retail season.
Why is this government protected post office monopoly selling Darrell Lea confectionery products including the Dad’s Bags? These are post shops. They should be selling stamps and packaging specifically for posting. That’s what they exist for. Darrell Lea products are outside the scope of what is allowed in the Act under which Australia Post operates in my view.
Every Dad’s Bag sold in a government owned post office is one less sale for a nearby small business newsagent. It would also be one more attack on small business by politicians of all sides who prefer to protect Australia Post than deliver on their claimed support for small business and competition.
Shame of Darrell Lea for dealing with the government owned monopoly. Shame on every politician who supports Australia Post competing with newsagents and other retailers through their corporate stores.
I’d like to see Australia Post corporate stores more tightly controlled in what they can sell – no cards, gifts, picnic sets, sewing machines, books, stationery or Darrell Lea
We are early returning the two boxes on One Direction lollypops and patches we received with our magazines last week. We should never have been sent these in the first place.
Besides the lollypop / patch packs not being magazines, I have no interest in selling One Direction product for 25% GP.
The other issue is that we have nowhere to place them except at the counter and I use that space for products for much higher gross profit.
I have access to a broad range of more relevant One Direction product from which I can achieve 50% gross profit and more. I’ll take the magazines but nothing else. I don’t need a magazine distribution company getting into this space – their interests are not aligned with mine.
That newsagents have been sent this and have to fund its return is another example of the disadvantage we face over other retailers selling magazines. The costs of being in the magazine space are far greater for us that for petrol, convenience and supermarket outlets. This disadvantage could hinder competition if newsagents get out of magazine altogether because of our continued inability to manage magazine (and other product supply to our businesses by magazine distributors.
Having to pay to send this product back disgusts me.
Easter eggs have not done great for us. We had an excellent range of eggs from Chocolatier and while they sold okay, we had to drop half of what we purchased to 50% late Thursday to move the stock. This is on the back of Easter card sales being up 20% YOY. Majors nearby were at 50% off and we had no choice if we wanted to get to the close of today with all stock gone. We’re on track to achieve that thankfully. How did eggs do for you?
If you get a chance to see a Happy Lab store it’s worth it as it shows how colour blocking and creative packaging can get people spending more on an everyday item than they otherwise might. It’s Smiggle for candy and chocolate lovers. Take the easter chocolates in the photo. At Happy Lab the price is close to three items I’d pay for a similar item elsewhere. However, the packaging and display are stunning, making it easier for shoppers to spend the higher amount. This is the Smiggle model with what I consider to be overpriced stationery for kids. Make something fashionable and people want it without worrying as much about price.
Another point about Happy Lab – I love their name as it’s, well, happy. Happy sells as I mentioned a few months ago about coke.
Check out where I noticed the Darrell Lea Australia Day Rock Lea Road product at one Woolworths yesterday … yeah, the sale rack at the back of the shop. I though of this given the comments on my earlier post on this.
This store had a big Australia Day display on fixtures elsewhere in-store. Maybe the DL stock moved quickly and this was all they had left. Either way, it’s not a good look given that Australia day is a few days off yet.
Check out the Darrell Lea Australia Day floor display unit on show at my local Woolworths supermarket yesterday.
I like the striking design of the unit, excellent for visual cut-through and perfect for placement next to the Australia Day display as it was. I also like the pitch: AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE! YUM, YUM, YUM! Very nice.
The Proudly Australian owned and operated pitch is also a strong message.
I’d be interested to know if newsagents selling darrell Lea have this display unit or were offered it.
Tic Tac Australia & New Zealand has more than 226,000 fans on Facebook. Their Facebook page is awash with coverage of the new, for a limited time only, green apple tic tacs. It’s a fun and engaging campaign – with Facebook fans having voted for this flavour to be manufactured.
TV channels are carrying plenty of advertising for green apple tic tacs.
I know from recent advertising in Convenience World magazine that year on year sales of tic tacs are up 11.2% and that 47% of shoppers want new flavours. This suggests the recently released green apple product will be a hit.
How the tic tac people are using Facebook and other platforms is a lesson on social media engagement. It is also an opportunity to leverage their leadership for our own benefit. Retailers who connect with the tic tac social media campaign can drive traffic for themselves and create their own local success.
I saw an excellent lift in one of my newsagencies when I leveraged social media coverage around One Direction … and it cost nothing. Why not do the same with tic tacs? While some newsagents will say there is no time, if you could have your message seen by 260K+ people why not invest the time?!
By leveraging I mean engaging on their Facebook page and through their Twitter feed – reaching our to existing tic tac fans. In each case you would need to engage with content that is complimentary to what they post. This is what I did with One Direction and it worked a treat.
Whether it is tic tacs or other major social media engaged brands, there are excellent social media opportunities for newsagents beyond our own Facebook page or Twitter feed – opportunities we can turn into traffic for our businesses and sales through our registers.
The new owners of Darrell Lea have connected with their pet-food roots and struck a deal to supply IGA supermarkets with Darrell Lea product. This will challenge sales in the existing network of independent retailers. It also sets the brand as a supermarket consumer brand more so than the premium brand of yesteryear.
I’d expect more newsagents to pull out of the product and look for premium confectionery products elsewhere.
Check out the gum dispenser I found in a newsagency a week back. I like this a lot as shoppers will notice it as they hand money over and accept change.
This type of unit has been used for used for instant scratch tickets.
Ideally, the unit could be used for different products every few weeks – sharing the high-traffic space with other items.
Darrell Lea resellers yesterday received a fax from the company outlining some changes. They have cut some products, changed trading terms and appointed a another company to handle distribution.
The reduction in product will leave the current Darrell Lea stands with spare space. Some of the cut lines will be missed y some retailers.
It’s the change in markdown policy that is causing the most concern. retailers accepted the low Darrell Lea margin because on a reasonable markdown policy. The policy is: no markdowns, credits, rebates or settlement discounts.
They say the new terms provide greater transparency. No they don’t. They say the new terms aim to build a stronger business relationship. No the don’t.
I suspect the changes will cause some retailers to quit stocking Darrell Lea and seek out an alternative.
The announcement provides no confidence of consultation with the people facing customers every day stocking and promoting the Darrell Lea product.
I was in a Darrell Lea outlet late yesterday and the staff commented that it had not been this busy with their products for ages. he said some people were buying to support the company and others were buying to get a last taste of their favourite items.
While the circumstances are not ideal the sales lift will be appreciated by Darrell Lea outlets including mine.
Meanwhile newsagents – don’t forget our survey.
You don’t know if you don’t ask…
