Newsagency management

I was fortunate to be at the NANA Newsagent of the Year awards last night in Sydney. It was a terrific evening with good newsagents and employees being recognised for their tremendous service to our channel. Plenty of suppliers were also represented and recognition was given to them for their support of the newsagency channel.

I was taken with the upbeat mood of newsagents and suppliers, it was most encouraging. It was not long ago that these events were more negative.
Well done NANA for a good evening.

Whenever we receive a supplier reward we share it with the team.  The latest kitty to share is four dozen bottles of wine, some beer and some movie passes.  We don’t make alcohol available to any employees under 18.  Those 18 or older get to choose their own bottles of wine – we line it up in the back room for selection as this photo from yesterday shows.

It’s important that everyone working in the newsagency understands opportunities like these supplier rewards.  By sharing what we receive we help them understand more about opportunities beyond the income the business received from selling items for which there are other rewards.

Occasionally, we will use rewards as customer gifts but not often as we have plenty of these throughout the year from other promotions.

I have had an opportunity this weekend to assess the impact of our decision to cease offering the Western Union service in August 2009.  We did 405 Western Union transactions in 2008 and 198 in the seven months for which we offered the service in 2009.

We are benefiting from easier management of sales counter resources, smoother customer throughput and sell time managing cash and follow up paperwork.  I cannot see a downside in the data for 2009.  While some Western Union transactions included other sales, the loss is too small to register and is covered by growth elsewhere.

Our decision to no longer offer Western Union at my newsagencies came about when we answered the question what do we stand for? – in the context of our counter offer.   Knowing how much newsagency customers like to be served quickly once they are at the counter, we knew we must stand for fast, efficient and friendly service for every customers.  Western Union was the one service offer we had which was a barrier to achieving this.  It was also the service with the potential for the most significant mistakes.

I took some time this weeked to look for a negative impact as a result of ceasing to offer Western Union.  I know that decisions can be wrong so I felt it was important to see if that was the case here.  I could find no negative impact.

We pulled our ad on Seek for new employees after seven days.  We received a total of 358 applications – more than any ad we have run in the past.  This tells me that in Victoria at least there is an enormous pool of people looking for work in retail.  The calibre of applicants was good.  We found five excellent candidates from the twelve we interviewed.

Further to my post two days ago, we have now received 198 applications via Seek from 623 people who have viewed the ad.  This is just in two days. We have received another 25 or so direct.  We’re now turning the ad off because we have a shortlist of 20 candidates for five positions.  Having spent hours reading resumes and application letters, I am impressed with the quality of candidates, especially those who get past the initial cull.

In four hours yesterday our online ad for staff for a new newsagency I am involved with generated 73 applications.  What particularly interested me was that 17 of the applicants have current newsagency experience.  This is a higher proprtion that I usually see.  The pool includes some candidates with excellent resumes.  We should find the team we are looking for.

September has been an interesting month for newsagents.  I have seen stores with excellent growth and others with dreadful figures.  From what I see, it continues the patchy economic condidions we find ourselves in.

In our own case, we had a good month overall: books – down 17% (due to differences in sales cycles over the two years); calendars – up 14%; cards – down 16% (due to run down to a complete card relay and 25% supplier replacement yesterday);  confectionery – up 2%; Gifts – up 83%; magazines – down 7%; ink – up 25%; stationery – down 24% (fluctuation in some corporate business).  Overall traffic is up 3% but average sale value is down 10%.

We are moving to higher margin product and this is creating a healthier business.

In magazine categories, partworks is the big drop – if we take these out of the figures, the magazine department is down around 3%; food – down 22%, sport – down 18%; women’s interests – down 12%; women’s weeklies – down 3%; computers – down 29%; craft – down 17%.

It is AFL Grand Final day in Melbourne.  This means a very busy morning to noon and a deaf rest of the day.  It also means plenty of footy banter in the morning and anti footy banter in the afternoon.  It’s an interesting day given the difference between morning and afternoon trade.  Kind of fun to experience.

One year we brought in a TV and played the game live in the shop.  Then we realised that those not at the game or at home or a pub watching the game had no interest.

Now, we engage as people want.  Our team this afternoon will be ready with non-footy even anti-footy banter for those who care less about the Grand Final.

Our ad looking for someo to join our newsXpress Forest Hill stores has been live at Seek for fifteen hours and we already have twenty applicants.  This is more than we usually see and, I guess, a sign of the times. The applicants range from school leavers through to someone with an MBA.   Yep, an MBA!

I attended the ACP Magazines Connections Conference in Cairns yesterday along with a couple of hundred other newsagents. It was a good event with speakers appropriate to proactive newsagents and an excellent opportunity to network with colleagues.

I was especially impressed with Bernard Salt. The data he shared was fascinating about the changes in demographics and how this shift, if understood, can be useful to retailers.  He also shared some interesting stats about newsagents and newsagency staff: the 2001 census showed this pool to be 38,000.  In 2006 it had falled to 33,000.  28% of newsagents and staff are over 55.  This will mean 28% exit within the next five years or so.

The Conference presented other excellent data to drive some good business decisions. With Newsagents accounting for 57% of ACP magazine sales and with the Connections Emerald group accounting for a significant portion of growth,  the investment by ACP in the conference is sure to pay off in better engagement and sales.

Our July numbers are show a healthy month, overall.  The sales numbers, compared to July last year are:  Art – up 14%; cards – up 9%, Gifts – up 200%, magazines – down 5%, Newspapers – up 6%, Ink – up 25%, Stationery – line ball.

There is good news inside the magazine department: food – up 7% (unit sales), men’s lifestyle – up 26%, music – up 15% (Michael Jackson), special interest – up 8%.  Women’s weeklies are down but our sales of these are choppy month to month.

I am undertaking a sales benchmark study comparing April-June 2009 against April-June 2008. This study will provide an update on the sales health of our channel with the last study now three months old.

Tower Newsagents can participate by sending a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box for a category breakdown. Set your first date range (on the left) to April 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009 and the date range of the right to one year earlier. Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@tower… Newsagents not using Tower Systems software should click here for a spreadsheet template.

I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.