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

Happy products

Newsagents have access to excellent healthy eating advice

newsagent-healthIn newsagency magazine departments we have access to excellent health and nutrition advice along side not so healthy temptations.

Time and other demands on running and working in a newsagency can challenge the health choices we make. I know I have succumbed too often to poor choices in shopping centre food courts.

One way we can help ourselves, our staff and our customers is to give prominence to health conscious magazines and issues of magazines promoting healthy recipes. We can also ensure that any topped food magazines put in the lunch room offer healthy choices over less healthy food.

With your newsagency most likely one of your most valuable assets you owe it to the business and those who depend on it to be fit and healthy. Exercise and diet are the keys to being fit and healthy. Many magazines you sell today have good advice on this. These are the magazines we should be paying more attention to: for our future and those who rely on us.

While I am no fitness expert, I have found wearing a pedometer to count steps and cooking some recipes in Diabetic Living and Australian Healthy Food Guide to be useful in feeling better.

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Happy products

Retail staff hiring advice: only hire and keep happy people

In a newsagency recently I heard a staff member complaining to a colleague behind the counter about the roster, the weather someone at home. I was several metres from the counter. Shoppers in the newsagency could hear too.

Unhappy staff are a turn off for shoppers and for the leaders of the business keen to create a happy place where people enjoy themselves.

We need to hire happy people and train them in their tasks rather than hire skilled people and hope to train them to be happy – if that is a choice you face.

Being happy in a newsagency can be a challenge some days with customers complaining about the smallest thing, some suppliers treating you appallingly, you discovering how much theft has cost you recently, your bank rejecting you banking a fake $50 note … and so on. Yes, there are many opportunities for us to be unhappy. This is another reason we need to surround ourselves with cheerful / happy people.

But there is plenty we see and hear in our newsagencies that makes us happy – if we look for it. If our natural disposition (as the owner and leader) is to be unhappy, we need to push back on that urge, we need to choose to be happy. Surrounding yourself with happy people is key to this.

We need to show unhappy people the door and encourage them to go work somewhere else.

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Customer Service

Sunday newsagency marketing tip: thirty Christmas marketing ideas

For many years I have published Christmas marketing ideas as a resource for others to use and as inspiration for newsagents to think of their own.  Here are thirty easy to implement simple Christmas marketing ideas for newsagents for Christmas 2014. I’m not suggesting you use all: pick what suite you and create your own.

  1. Promote every day items as gifts within your displays.  magazines work in this situation. Too often retailers focus on items they have sourced for Christmas and then wonder why there is little flow on once the season is over. One way to embrace the opportunity is to pitch everyday products as gifts. This could involve packaging them that’d appropriate.
  2. Pitch magazines for different groups. For example: gifts for guys: create an off-location display of magazines for guys so that those buying christmas cards and gifts in your shop can consider magazines as a gift.
  3. Pitch magazine putaways as gifts. You could offer a title put away for three or six months – something different to subscription lengths.
  4. Make sure the front of your shop, the window our the front facing the street or mall has your best offers. This is what the majors do. If you have an amazing deal, put it on show for all to see.
  5. Use a spruiker once a week at your busiest time to shout out about great items you have. If you can’t afford a spruiker, do it yourself. Go to any weekend market and see how it’s done. Have fun!
  6. Connect with a charity. In addition to products you may sell that raise funds for a charity consider a local charity and promote how every purchase in your store supports the charity.
  7. Have a box for collecting items for a local charity.
  8. Send Christmas cards to your customers – maybe invade a voucher for them to spend in-store.
  9. Give retailers nearby a discount card / coupon / voucher for them to do their own shopping. Consider a special buying night for retailers and their employees given the hours they are working.
  10. Have a crazy competition one day. Something like – come in and sing silent night in a completely fresh and crazy way and the best rendition wins, say, $100. Pitch it right and you’ll draw a crowd. Remember the crowd the now closed gaslight records in Melbourne drew for nude day.
  11. Offer a Christmas party flyer copying discount – half price copying of all Christmas party flyers.
  12. Host a colouring competition. Connect it with Christmas. Display all entries. Leverage an emotional connection through your theme such as: something good you have seen this year or your wish for someone else this Christmas.
  13. Keep it simple. While shops fill to overflowing with products this time of the year too often what you want seen can’t be seen because of the explosion of range and colour. Create space to show off your hero products, consider the less is more approach.
  14. Use stickers and or posters on your floor to show customers where you want them to go. Have Christmas themed basket builders at the counter – priced at under $10.00.
  15. Make an entrance. Create something around the entrance to your shop so that those stepping inside feel as if they are stepping into somewhere different, somewhere special.
  16. Have Christmas themed impulse items dotted next to main customer thoroughfares.
  17. Give every customer a flyer promoting your Christmas offers. Ideally you’ll have a couple of flyers through the season.
  18. Move everyday items elsewhere in the shop during the season – disrupt your regular shoppers.
  19. Dress up. Not just once but several times.
  20. Tell stories on your Facebook page about the season, what you’re doing and the fun you’re having.
  21. Have fun with your team and your customers.
  22. Thank your customers for their support.
  23. Setup a customer interaction board and invite them to post their best Christmas story.
  24. Have promotional days: free stamp Tuesday where you give free stamps with each card to people buying two or more cards; free tape Saturday for people buying two or more rolls or packs of wrap; free wrapping week where you offer free wrapping with every gift.
  25. Use your floor, Stickers and or posters on the floor can guide those customers who look down and not up.
  26. Place gifts / Christmas items in magazines. Your magazine department attracts shoppers to categories they love. leverage this with placement of appropriate items in those areas.
  27. Work the floor. At your busiest times have someone on the flor subtly showing off products you sell.
  28. Give your customers a reason to come back – an offer, a promotion, a discount voucher.
  29. Tell a story. If space permits, show how a feature product is used. For example, if you’re selling jigsaws, have a table with one half done. Getting shoppers interacting gets them more engaged with your business and engagement = sales.
  30. Love the season. This can be challenging with the extreme business of Christmas trading and the challenges that the season presents. But each day when you step into the shop try and love it as if it’s a fresh start.
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Fun

The cult of Lego right for newsagents

Outside and inside the massive Times Square shopping mall in Hong Kong is larger-than-life displays of Lego for Christmas and celebrating the anniversary of the company. This brand is massive the world over. I know of newsagents who do excellent business with Lego products. The displays I have just seen make me think it’s time to include the range in at least some of my stores. It certainly fits with the collectible focus we have.

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Gifts

Happy Halloween!

fhn_halloween_entrance1.JPGThe big day is finally here.  October 31 – Halloween.  This has been a terrific Halloween season for us, the best ever.  Excellent sales of Halloween related items at fantastic margin – 50% and above. Sales across categories: party items, candy, magazines and cards.  We have demonstrated our competitiveness on range and price and this has won new customers for us thanks to great word of mouth.  Halloween has also given us a reason to create in-store theatre and this benefits the whole of the business.

Halloween is a natural fit for newsagents.  Done well, sales can beat some other traditional seasons. We are aleady discussing Halloween 2010.

Ann Davies, US correspondent for The Age, has written an excellent piece which provides context for the Halloween celebreation in the US from an Australian’s perspective.

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Gifts

More happy space products

fassets.JPGThese small pads from For Arts Sake are an ideal addition to the happy space in newsagencies about which I blogged yesterday.  They work at the counter as an impulse item and also work in an area dedicated items which reflect a positive outlook on life.  Our customers love items like this.  They make for an ideal small gift to accompany a Thank You or Congratulations card.

The more I think about the more I like the idea of a section of our newsagencies, a happy space,  dedicated to positive and inspiring gifts and thoughts. 

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Happy products