At my Malvern (VIC) newsagency we advised customers earlier this week that we are quitting offering MYKI public transport ticket recharge services.
We will stop offering all MYKI services including card top-up from the end of March.
For years, offering MYKI services has been loss making, costing us more in time than the government pays.
Most MYKI customers don’t buy anything else, making it hard to justify the service.
We’re a business and need to pay our staff as well as rent and other overheads. MYKI is not commercially viable for us.
We understand this will be disappointing.
By letting you know now you have time to consider other locations for your MYKI services.
Thank you.
Your newsXpress Malvern crew.
This is the only agency service we offer at the business. They were doing it when I bought the business a few years ago and we kept it on so as to not disrupt the relationship with customers, just as we have remained committed to the $400K a year on magazine sales.
While MYKI top-ups offer good shopper traffic, it’s unprofitable traffic. Commission is small and 80% of MYKI customers do the top up and nothing else. Of those who purchase something else with a MYKI top-up, for most it is a newspaper, another small margin product (12%).
It will be good to be finally done with this last agency line we have. MYKI customers tend to want to tell us their public transport challenges. They also expect us to resolve issues they have with MYKI and no amount of telling them we are not the company by MYKI time is spend being polite to them.
At this newsagency and elsewhere we are not chasing shopper traffic. While good shopper traffic can make you feel busy, it, too often, does not sufficiently support profitability. We are focussed on efficient business profitability.
Selling high ticket price high margin lines for which the business is known and sought out is more valuable than these micro margin agency lines.
I’ll take being profitable over shop business every time.
In considering all of this we have to let go of the shopper expectation of the shingle. Aussie newsagents can sell anything. Being bound by the shingle in 2025 is unprofitable.
The reaction to our MYKI decision has been one of disappointment by customers. They are grateful for the advanced notice and our convcersations around how unprofitable offering the service is.
Many small businesses are for sale in Australia right now, including many newsagencies.
While some talk about economic conditions as the reason (queue the cost of living spin cycle of news outlets), the bigges reason I can see is the age of the business owners selling. Typically, they a boomers planning for retirement.
The baby boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, comprises a substantial portion of small business owners in Australia. As this cohort reaches traditional retirement age, a natural wave of business transitions is occurring. Whether they make the decision to see or hand the business to family members depends on their own circumstance.
While this demographic shift has been predicted, not many took notice. Instead they are worrying as if something unpredictable and bad is happening. It’s not.
In my experience, many baby boomer business owners lack formal succession plans. This can stem from various factors, including the absence of interested family members or employees capable of taking over.
Consequently, selling the business becomes the most viable option for owners seeking to secure their retirement, which places us where we are today.
Plenty of baby boomers have accumulated ‘wealth’ or assets tied to their businesses. As they transition into retirement, they seek to liquidate these assets to fund their post-working lives.
The sheer volume of baby boomer-owned businesses coming onto the market creates a unique opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly younger generations. It also makes for a challenge for those seeking to exit – especially in sectors where there are plenty for sale, like newsagencies. This plays into price and the easy of finding a buyer.
Smart small business owners, including newsagents, have acted long ago to create profitable businesses knowing that they are likely to make more from the day to day trade of the business than when they sell. I have written about this plenty of times here and elsewhere. Make every day your payday.
Too often I see small business owners who have not planned for a profitable exit make emotional decisions and strike out against others as if they are responsible for decisions the small business owners themselves have made.
It’s a buyers market right now. It’s not too late, though, to focus on making every day count for more value for you, making the selling less stressful and sharp.
Pokémon continues to be one of the top performing brands in Australia. There’s the game people play on their phone, collector cards and sets, magazines, plush, clothing and plenty more.
In Australia right now there 9,300,000 searched online a month related to Pokémon. There are 1,269,477 different keywords used in search that include Pokémon.
Now let’s look at Pokémon cards since these are products some newsagents sell with excellent success. There are 788,000 searches each month in Australia for Pokémon cards.
My point here is that flowing from the Pokémon is opportunity for newsagents, in-store as well as online, but more important online than in-store since that’s where shopping starts now for products like this.
Now if you think you’re customers are not Pokémon players or interested in Pokémon product, think again.
There is a passionate community surrounding Pokémon, a multi-generational community with dedicated fans actively seeking products and experiences. By tapping into this enthusiasm through targeted online promotions and a well-curated selection of Pokémon merchandise, newsagents can not only drive sales but also cultivate customer loyalty.
Think exclusive online bundles, early access to new releases, or even virtual events connecting local collectors. Embracing the digital landscape and understanding the nuances of the Pokémon market allows newsagents to position themselves as go-to destinations for fans, ultimately boosting their bottom line and ensuring long-term success.
Pokémon is just one of the brands with strong and loyal communities that you can leverage is you have a website connected to your newsagency software and if you take a brand-forward approach to your business decisions, especially marketing. My advice is to lean more into brands with strong followings and find new customers through this.
By understanding the scale of online interest and the passionate community surrounding a brand, newsagents (and other retailers) can strategically leverage both their physical and online presence.
While in-store displays and promotions will attract impulse buys, a smart online strategy, including engaging content, and a diverse product offering, is crucial for reaching the wider Pokémon fan base far away from your shop and driving substantial revenue growth. This proactive approach, focusing on brands with popularity and a following, offers a clear pathway to success in today’s changing retail world.
I am so grateful for the opportunity of visit the huge Christmasworld trade show in Frankfurt a couple of days ago. It was my first time.
When I say Christmasworld is huge, I meant it sincerely. This is a big trade show over several hal;ls with each hall bigger than any trade show hall in Australia. Once you add Christmasworld, Stationeryworld, Creativeworld and Ambiente together, three trade shows across one large campus in Frankfiurt, you have a trade event bigger than Spring Fair in Birmingham and much much bigger than anything in Australia. And, yes, size does matter for you are presented an extraordinary range for businesses from those who focus on the low end through to those who focus at the high end.
I’d talked myself out of going previously because of importation challenges. Now we have a viable solution for importation that has worked for a couple of years, I was ready. I was keen to be challenged in terms of what we could sell to Christmas-focussed shoppers, especially all year round.
While the trade show floor did offer what we’d call everyday Christmas decorations, they occupied a fraction of the space. What dominated was European craftsmanship and aesthetic in what I’d call the seasonal decor space. Whereas we might focus on classic Santa decorations for Christmas, the European approach is richer, more diverse and more stylish.
So many times on the trade show floor I saw products I’ve never seen from an Australian supplier that I knew would work. I also saw some products I’ve seen in Australia. I know of some major high end Aussie retailers who have sourced products at Christmasworld previously.
It was interesting talking with people working the trade show booths about what sells where and to hear stories of any business with Australia retailers. My most enjoyable thing to do though was to watch other retailers purchase. It was instructive to see what they had seen, that I had missed. Some insights I picked up were valuable.
So many suppliers at Christmasworld presented products I have never seen in Australia. I have come away with several orders in place and more on the way. I walked 21,000 steps, took over 500 photos and had genuinely meaningful business discussions with many suppliers.
I was surprised at how many suppliers did not use tech on their stands for taking orders. This also fed into some good conversations about software being used in retail. In our type of retail channel in Australia we are more tech advanced than what I heard about in Frankfurt.
Now, if you’ve read this far, thanks, and you’re be right to be annoyed at the little specific detail I have shared. I’ve kept specific details to myself for competitive advantage. Please don’t begrudge me that.
Here are some photos. Looking at them, they do not do the event justice. These first four though show how educational the event is. The first is a very popular display. The next 3 are of the same display showing some small details from the display, demonstrating the educational value of seeing this level of visual merchandising in action.
Here are some other photos:
Any retailer doing reasonable business in the Christmas space should attend Christmasworld at least once.
Collectors come in all sorts today. Take coin collectors, there are coin collectors, licence fans who purchase coin products, nostalgia lovers who purchase coin products and then there are those celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, citizenship, new babies, Lunar New Year and other events who buy coins. The huge success of the Bluey, remembrance, AFL, NRL and other coin series attest to the diverse mix of customers in the coin space.
At the World Money Fair in Berlin this past week you could see a range of types of buyers of coins.
One of the biggest mistakes I see retailers making is dismissing coins as a viable product category. They think they can’t find or sell to coin collectors. But the reality is, everyone is a potential coin collector given the right circumstances. Coins tap into something primal – a connection to history, a fascination with craftsmanship, and the thrill of owning something rare and valuable. That’s what makes the World Money Fair so important. It showcases the breadth of the market, from classic gold bullion to pop culture collectibles, and everything in between.
Attending the trade show and talking with so many people has helped me understand even better the extent of the coin collector opportunity. It’s an important category in my own shops as well as online, into $1M+ a year. See our mint coin shop website for example.
Unlike the Spring Fair trade show I mentioned in my previous post, World Money Fair in Berlin took up as much space as I had seen previously and the floors were as busy with attendees as ever. This is a show for businesses as well, as individuals, which is interesting if you want to better understand one section of your customer pool.
I am grateful for the opportunity to attend and the insights gained. If all goes well, we will have another couple of mints to represent soon.
Oh, and yes, newsagents can do very well out of selling mint coins and related products.
If you decide to give coins a go, start with a smaller selection to gauge interest and build your knowledge. Partnering with reputable distributors is essential to ensure authenticity and fair pricing. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and learn about the fascinating world of numismatics – your enthusiasm will be contagious!
The New Zealand Mint has launched these and we are grateful to offer them. These aren’t your typical baseball cards; they’re meticulously crafted coins that celebrate America’s favourite pastime. Here’s what makes them stand out:
Officially Licenceby Major League Baseball.
High-Quality Craftsmanship.
Collectible Variety.
Rarity and Value.
Unique Packaging.
Blending Hobbies.
Whether you’re a die-hard baseball fan, a seasoned coin collector, or someone looking for a unique gift, the New Zealand Mint’s Major League Baseball Trading Coins offer a compelling blend of sports memorabilia and numismatic artistry.
This is one example of a coin product that covers coin collecting, pop culture, sport and gift giving.
I’m going to keep this simple and achievable. If you don’t have a plan for your newsagency for this year, do these things to get started, right away.
Find out what’s not working: the quietest hours of the day, stock that’s not selling, suppliers who are under performing. Your newsagency software can easily reveal these things to you, in seconds. These things provide you with your starting point, they provide you ToDo list.
What’s not working is stock you’re not selling, stock not sold whatsoever over the last, say, six months. List it and quit it. Getting a fraction of the cost is better that you getting nothing, which is what you’re experiencing today. Quit dead stock urgently.
Suppliers not performing are those shown to have stock that’s moving slowly or contributing the least to your grow profit. One you have the list, consider whether to quit the supplier or, maybe, to at least talk with them and explain the situation. Doing nothing with this information is not an option. Take action based on the evidence you have.
The quietest hours of the day are the most expensive in terms of labour cost. Look at your roster. Roster the business for profit over friendship. Or, figure out steps you can take to make those underperforming hours work better for you. Is there work on the business done in other times that can be moved to them?
These three moves are not a complete plan, they are not even part of a plan. The goal here is to give you thinks you can do today, action you can do today.
Action is what 2025 has to be about in every newsagency business. I think this has to be a year of urgency in our channel and we need to drive that urgency ourselves as no one else is likely to drive it for us.
Now before you say I am being melodramatic, the reality is that lottery purchases continue to migrate online, print media sales continue to decline, rents are increasing as are labour costs. These are known things. They alone are enough of a reason for us to see an urgency for us working on our businesses.
If you don’t have a plan for this year, use the steps here and, hopefully, while doing that opportunities for your own plan will come to you.
What you achieve in, with and from your newsagency in 2025 is 100% up to you. Success will come from change.
With the school year about to start and many now back at work after a summer break, we have an opportunity to turn our mind to 2025.
Hmm, if you’re starting to think about 2025 in your newsagency now, you are coming late to the party. For many, planning for 2025 was well under way six month ago. Never mind. Even late planning is better than no planning.
Let’s start by looking at what we think might happen in 2025 in the context of our Australian newsagency channel.
Newspaper sales will continue to decline. Newspapers will generate less traffic for your business. The financial contribution they make to your profit will fall. I expect over the counter newspaper sales to fall by between 10% and 12% this year.
Magazine sales will continue to fall. While magazines will generate less traffic, the decline will not be as much as newspapers depending on your approach to magazines. Newsagents with a strong commitment to special interest and niche category titles will have a good year. Those who focus only in the top 100 magazine titles will have a less good year. I expect overall magazine unit sales to decline by between 9% and 11% with the majority of that decline to come from the top 100 titles.
Stationery sales will be good, up, in newsagencies that gave a range tuned to local everyday needs as well as a focus on offering stationery for those who love stationery. This is an important distinction. People who buy stationery because they have to focus on convenience and function whereas those who buy stationery because they love it buy because they have found something not often seen elsewhere. Newsagency can play in both of ese spaces well, and thrive. I think stationery revenue can be up 10% if we put our mind to it.
Greeting card sales. As with stationery, people buy greeting cards for different reasons: obligation, guilt, expressing love, to be remembered in the future and because they like the look of a card. Newsagents who do the bare minimum and leave managing the card department to their card suppliers will have a flat year, maybe a decline – not because of the card company but because of the disinterest by the business owner in this vital category. Newsagents actively engaged with cards, those who pitch cards as an impulse purchase and those who understand and lean into the different reasons for buying cards, they will have a good year – I expect growth of 5% to 10% in card sales.
Gift sales. This is open land for harvesting, good land, fertile, ours for the taking – as long as we approach gifts as if this was the only category on which we could rely in our business. If we stock the kind of gifts a supplier says are perfect for a newsagency, the year won’t be so good. If we stock outside that quaint expectation and play outside what our businesses are known for, it could be a good year. I know newsagents expecting 25% growth in gift revenue this year, and more.
Online. This is the biggest opportunity for it’s us reaching people who will never set foot in our shop. In one of my own shops where our website is barely eight months old, we’ve already done $25,000 in online sales in 2025, with nothing spent on marketing. I know of a newsagent mature in online who has done $40,000 this year online. What we achieve is only constrained by our imagination. No, budget is not a factor, not from what I see.
2025 is a year of opportunity for our Australian newsagency channel. What we achieve is up to us. If we do nothing outside of what has been usual for us, we hold our business to the trajectory of 2024 and prior. If we change our approach, if we have a 90p degree turn, if we open some new does, if we fundamentally reset our shop with little consideration of what some expect of an Aussie newsagency, 2025 can be a year of terrific grow, wonderful profit and a feeling of achievement.
Newsagents and other local small business retailers have a terrific opportunity with Valentine’s Day. It starts with you understanding that it’s not just about celebrating romantic love. Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to share love, romantic or otherwise. Here are tips for having fun this Valentive’s day and driving success in your shops:
Put your Valentine’s Day cards out early, in the front of the shop so every shopper sees them.
Write about Valentine’s Day cards on social media, one card per post. Highlight fun cards, cards for non-traditional valentine’s day giving, cards you love. Give something of yourself in these posts.
Have one or two Valentine’s Day cards at the counter. Change them every few days.
Have a couple of Valentine’s Day impulse items at the counter: chocolate hearts, photo frame, a cute plush item.
Create a local love wall. Have a pen and a post0it note pad nearby and invite people to write something they love about the town – this shows that Valentine’s Day does not to be about romantic love, it’s about helping people connect with what they love.
Offer a free card selection service. Help people unsure about what card to choose to buy from you.
Offer free training or help with what to write on a card.
Share stories on social media that expand the appeal of the season.
Create a photo opportunity. Create somewhere people can come and be photographed. You could even have an Instax camera there for photos to be taken and put on a wall in your shop.
Pitch non traditional items as Valentine’s Day gifts. here are some ideas:
A squishy toy because you make be squishy with love.
Marbles because I’m marbles to love you.
A superhero products because you are my superhero.
A jigsaw so I have more time to spend with you.
A journal so you can write how much you love me every day.
Photo frames with cool and on-trend love messages.
A whoopee cushion because we share everything.
Cards Against Humanity because if we can survive this we can survive anything.
An Affirmations inspirations box as it brings my encouragement to your work desk.
A unicorn because rainbows = love.
A music themed mug or other item that connects with a band or song that has special meaning.
A plush item so you have something to hug when I am not around.
By embracing the broader spirit of Valentine’s Day and showcasing creative gift ideas, local retailers can not only boost sales but also become a cherished part of their community. This Valentine’s Day, let your shop be a hub of love, laughter, and unique expressions of affection, reminding everyone that love comes in many forms and can be celebrated in countless ways.
What you achieve from Valentine’s Day 2025 is dependent on what you invest in the outcome. Putting stock out is not enough for you to stand out and be talked about among friends. Be engaged. have fun. Make Valentine’s Day this year your best ever.
The Boxing Day sales are a crucial event for small business retailers in shopping centres in Australia, especially on the east coast. This annual shopping event presents a unique opportunity for these businesses to boost sales.
The Boxing Day sales draw significant crowds to shopping centres. This surge in foot traffic provides small retailers with excellent exposure to potential customers who may not have visited their store otherwise.
Smart retailers have bought for the sale and they use the Boxing Day sales to offload excess stock. This helps them free up valuable shelf space for new merchandise and generate much-needed cash flow.
By participating in the Boxing Day sales, small businesses can ride on the marketing coattails of the big retailers who spend up on advertising.
Successful Boxing Day sales can enhance a small business’s reputation and create a positive brand association with value and affordability.
In you are in a shopping centre, the Boxing Day sale can be a valuable engagement opportunity.
In my own situation, in high street stores, it’s not as much of a thing. Online, however, it’s HUGE.
Sales of collectible products are stronger than ever. from the $10 trading card products to $10,000 mint coins to limited edition plush items priced at $150 or so, collectors are collecting at greater numbers than ever.
The strong marketplace is boosted by people now collecting as a side hustle. There are several groups across a range of collector niches that are driving the growth here.
The $650.00 per set Major League Baseball product released yesterday sold out in a few minutes, exceeding expectations. The new Pokémon card set released earlier in the week sold out in no time.
Collectors and flippers (those buying and flipping as a side hustle) will travel a distance to make their purchase, some will travel several hours if they can be sure of getting what they want.
I know of newsagents doing over $150,000 a year in this space, some even more. My point is this is a growth opportunity. You can turn the stock a month before you have to pay for it and you can attract shoppers who are basket efficient – plenty buy other items when they are in the shop. You achieve basket efficiency by smart buying, leaning into opportunities related to a licence or appropriate aligned with the collector’s interests to drive a deeper basket.
Consider Pokémon for a moment. There are currently 9,100,000 searches a month online in Australia for Pokémon. That’s 50% more searches in Australia than Disney achieves.
Having products that are so sought after positions us well. It helps us make more money. It makes our businesses more valuable.
Collectibles are a valuable opportunity for newsagents.
Run a comparison report comparing performance in your business from November 1, 2024 to December 9 2024 compared to the same dates in 2024. If your business is like I have seen from plenty of other businesses today you should be seeing:
Card sales up 9%.
Gift sales up 21%.
Plush sales up 16%.
Toy sales up 15%.
Book sales up 12%.
Stationery sales up 4%
Magazine sales down 11%.
Newspaper sales down 12%.
These are the average results from 20+ different businesses. All high street though, no shopping centre businesses. Mor regional and rural than in the city. The best news is in the top five numbers.
In each of the businesses from which I have drawn data, they have made a conscious decision to pursue growth in one or more parts of the business while, at the same time, at least maintaining decaying product categories (i.e. not actively harming them).
What is most interesting in the data is that in more than half the businesses the growth was achieved off a flat transaction count. These businesses are getting existing customers spending more.
My point is that there are newsagents growing their businesses, achieving results of which they can be proud, results that deliver a healthier P&L.
Data like this is easy to access. if you have the industry standard Tower newsagency software, use the Monthly Sales Comparison Report. It’s the benchmark report for this type of analysis. I love this report. In seconds you can have your results and compare where your business is at. It’s the report I use.
I know of newsagents who wait for their accountant to produce a report on business performance. I think that takes too long and is too expensive. You can run this report today and have in no time at all valuable information to guide more moves you can make in your shop. Waiting for a non-retailer to tell you how you’re doing is old-school and, usually, unhelpful.
Take a look at your numbers. If they differ considerably from what I have noted here, reach out. I’d be happy to take a look for you. I am keen to help newsagents run healthy and profitable retail businesses.
Our channel has come i9n for some negative reporting in the media this year. The best response we can have is to grow our businesses and, with this, flip the bird at ignorant reporters and media outlets.
A few months ago, I embarked on a small experiment: building a website for a local suburban Melbourne shop, my newsXpress Mount Waverley shop, on a tight budget and following the advice I give to other retailers.
The goal was to test the waters: to see what could be achieved with minimal investment, to see if the advice provided, when followed, is financially valuable.
Starting with a modest product range, the website quickly began generating sales. As I discuss in this video, which was shot late last week, in the seven weeks to filming, this simple online store has raked in over $18,000 without any additional marketing spend or inventory investment.
In the last week sales have surged further, the website has delivered over $5,000 in revenue in seven days. Not one sale has been to an existing customer. On top of this, the website has driven excellent growth in in-store shopper visitors: they find the product on line, find out where we are, and they shop in-store.
This video takes you behind the scenes on what we have been able to do through the Hugs and Love website integration with our Tower Systems newsagency POS software into the Shopify website.
The Hugs and Love website (www.hugsandlove.com.au) is a prime example of how seamlessly integrating Tower Systems POS software with Shopify can streamline online sales and fulfilment processes for local businesses. This powerful combination allows businesses to efficiently manage their inventory, process orders, and fulfil purchases both in-store and online. By leveraging the strength of these two platforms, local shops can:
Expand their reach: Attract new customers and increase sales beyond their physical storefront.
Simplify operations: Streamline inventory management and order processing, saving time and reducing errors.
Enhance customer experience: Offer a convenient and efficient online shopping experience.
The experience with this website has been valuable in helping us see what is possible in the shop.
I am always telling retailers who are creating their first website to launch early and launch often. Where we started with Hugs and Love in terms of products is different to where we are at today. We quickly discovered opportunities, and we leaned (hard) into them. This has been a key factor in making money. It has also provided a runway into 2025.
I see newsagents, and other retailers, make mistakes with their websites, big mistakes, expensive mistakes. Keeping it simple and developing on a frugal budget is best. Having as much control yourself as possible is key too.
The most important advice that the Hugs and Love experience has reinforced is that a good website is a good plan B. It provides you opportunities outside of the shop you know, in case you want an option away from the shop.
Now, here’s the pitch: what I’ve done with www.hugsandlove.com.au is bring together the newsXpress retail experience and the Tower Systems newsagency software experience to create a solution that could work in any newsagency regardless of location or size. As I said, it’s a pitch. It’s also an explanation of how you can make money: take the Tower tech, the newsXpress expertise, a frugal budget and some of your time and you can achieve a return on investment that is likely to be better than the return you are getting from your shop today.
When we consider the newsagency of the future, one option is that it is this, it is playing away from the boundaries of your four walls and the expectations and restrictions of the newsagency shingle. It is about harvesting shoppers far away from your business, learning form the data they share and turbocharging your business growth with almost no additional capex, labour investment or space investment – delivering bonus net profit to your bottom line.
I’d be happy to talk one on one with any newsagent on this 0418 321 338 or mark@towersystems.com.au) , to take you further behind the scenes or to verify any of the information I have provided here.
I have been assisting a newsagent over the last two weeks in their lease negotiations. Their landlord, a well-known national business, is insisting on an annual rental increase of CPI + 2% and a similar increase on their mandatory marketing fund contribution. For this particular landlord the increase being sought in new lease agreements is more than in recent years – a consequence of the Covid years I suspect.
The landlord refuses to consider that a significant portion of what is sold in a newsagency, even a newsagency that has transformed from the traditional, comes from products over which the retailer has little or no control on the sale price. Indeed, plenty of products in any Australian newsagency have experiences price suppression over the last five years, making newsagents worse off in real terms.
While the person representing the landlord locally appears to have no wriggle room on the annual increase, they have some capacity on the base rent. It’s not enough though to make this tenancy viable from my perspective, especially when you take on board the restrictions in the lease permitted use clause.
Through the retailer, I have provided the landlord with comprehensive data on product price history to support the request for a fairer approach to the annual rental increase as well as evidence of a typical ‘newsagency’ today to expand what is covered in the permitted use clause. They appear to be unswayed by the evidence presented.
Talking about the situation with a leasing consultant last last week, they commented that they, too, had noticed a toughening of position by several major national landlords in their negotiations with small business retailers.
I mention this today to people who stop by here, newsagents, suppliers and landlords, to encourage them to understand the pressure newsagents, especially those in major shopping centres, are under.
I ask that suppliers consider this when setting your product prices and determining the gross profit your wholesale model permits for retailers. Your decisions impact the capacity of newsagents to pay the lease cost hikes set by landlords.
I ask that landlords treat newsagents differently to other retailers who do have more control over their priced. Plenty of suppliers will back up what I have shared here.
I ask that newsagents actively consider the value of being in a major shopping centre. The value has diminished over the years. Better opportunities outside exist in many situations. If you are not happy with a lease, don’t sign it. If you have any concerns whatsoever about your capacity to fulfil the obligations of the lease, don’t sign it. If your lawyer on reviewing the lease recommends against it, don’t sign it. There are many other options.
With overheads (insurance, power etc.) up by 10% and more and the retail award expected to increase close to 5% again this year, newsagents are having to increase their sales by more than 5% and increase their overall business gross profit by one or two points to not fall behind let alone move ahead.
In my work with the newsXpress group of 200 newsagents, the key focus right now is about:
Maximising the gross profit on every item over which they have price control.
Maximising shopper visit efficiency (from a deeper basket each visit).
Maximising shopper value: bringing the shopper back sooner.
Maximising stock turn and thereby maximising return on inventory investment.
Maximising return on labour spend: by working on operational efficiency.
Back in the day, when our channel was a government protected monopoly, these things did not matter. Opening the shop door in the morning was all we needed to do to thrive. There was plenty of business to cover parts of the business that were not performing well.
Today in newsagency businesses, every supplier, every product, every staff member must perform. There is no slack to cover failure. (Suppliers take note.)
Also today, newsagents must play further afield, further away from what has been traditional for newsagents. Fashion, coffee, greenlife, licenced product and online are all areas of tight focus for our community. We especially like exploring products people might never consider offering in a newsagency.
It’s hard work every day. It’s what we signed up for, all of us in retail and in this channel.
I am seeing excellent newsagency charity boxed Christmas card sales already this year with sales significantly up on 2023.
For one of my newsagency businesses they are up 20%, off a strong number from 2023.
This growth has been driven, I think, by a few factors:
An expansion of range. We have 50% more designs than last year. We source our cards from five different suppliers.
The ability to capture sales online – 90% of online sales are to people nowhere near the business.
A focus on charities first. Customers can buy by charity and many are. Boxed Christmas cards used to be arranged by design theme: religious, Australian, humour etc. Our charities first approach is paying off. Smart card publishers provide details on card packaging and the cards about the charity being supported, offering another engagement point for customers.
A secondary focus on Australian designs. Smart card publishers promote the Australian artist connection on their external product packaging.
Going out early. The money we have stock it is out and being pitched.
Marketing to previous customers. We know who they are and reach out to them to let them know what’s new and in.
Tactical in-store placement so that every shopper passes the cards as they enter and leave the shop.
Charity boxed Christmas cards are a good fit for any newsagency business as the charities are local and this fits with the localness of the typical newsagency business.
On the topic of online sales, on Melbourne Cup day one of my shops that was closed for the whole day did over $500 in sales of charity boxed Christmas cards. That’s a good result given nothing was spent on marketing to achieve this. The key to the online success is the SEO work I have done to drive ranking for this website.
Charity boxed Christmas cards are an excellent opportunity for our channel. I think anyone not embracing them should consider doing so. They are an easy win, and they are a terrific opportunity to do good, I especially like this connection.
For a financial reference, for many years in my various newsagencies, sales of charity boxed Christmas cards have been 3 and, often, more times the dollar value of sales of single Christmas cards.
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My newsXpress newsagency marketing group has, for many years, provided guidance and help to its members to maximise the charity boxed Christmas cards opportunity. Some of what I have covered above is based on that advice.
Retailers, small business retailers especially, can get stuck on what to do about a free shipping trigger point for their website and the actual shipping charges they apply.
We have see it slow the process of getting their new website live.
After looking at many websites across a range of product categories I have some advice that I hope is helpful. I made this video yesterday:
For the free shipping trigger, if you are not sure where to start, start with $100. Experience with the website will soon guide you as to where you might adjust this. Adjusting the free shipping trigger is easy. Where you land really depends on your own business.
What you charge for shipping, when you do charge, needs to be simple and understandable. Too often we see retailers over complicate this. If you are not sure where to start, choose a number: $10, $12, $15, any number, and start there. Once the website is live, shopper engagement will guide you on where to land.
Every online business has shipping costs. Be careful to not be sidetracked by big competitors that pitch free shipping. Sure, there are shoppers who chase free shipping. There are more shoppers who appreciate reliability, personal service, care with packaging and, most important, of all, immediate availability of stock.
The advice in this video is part of a series of short videos Tower Systems is creating for retailers having websites built by the company and connected to its POS software. The advice in this video is not Tower specific.
The goal of the video is to share information that helps you make an informed decision faster, to overcome a common hurdle on the path to getting live with your website.
Deciding on the right free shipping trigger for your website involves several factors:
Shipping Costs: Calculate your average shipping costs to determine a sustainable threshold for your business. The trigger should cover these costs and ideally contribute to your profit margin.
Customer Behaviour: Analyse your customer data to understand their average order value. Set a trigger that incentivises customers to exceed this value.
Competitor Analysis: Research your competitors’ shipping policies. You could choose to offer a competitive or more attractive free shipping offer.
Profit Margin: Ensure the free shipping trigger doesn’t significantly impact your overall profitability. Consider the potential increase in sales versus the cost of free shipping.
If shipping costs are slowing you going live with your website, make a decision, any decision, and monitor shopper behaviour, adjust as you learn.
Newsagencies in decline as demand for online content outstrips print media.
It’s a headline from an ABC news story a few months ago, a story published online, on radio and on TV. I wrote about it here at the time.
The story, reporting on the closure of Mansfield Newsagency in Victoria, failed to adequately report on the state of Australian newsagencies. So called experts failed to present accurate current information about the health of local newsagency businesses.
While there have been newsagency closures, the numbers are not huge, not as big as we see in retail channels.
The ABC News story is another in a series of reports by the ABC and other mainstream media outlets in Australia to properly report on the state of Australian newsagencies. While there are businesses struggling, there are more thriving, growing.
Let’s all work at pushing back on the cliché narrative about our channel.
Rather than complain about the failures of news media and some others to adequately represent our channel, here are steps I think we can all take in our newsagency businesses.
On social media, engage with content that is different to what people expect from a newsagency. That means posting less about magazines and lottery products and more about unique gifts, clothing, books and toys you may sell.
In your social media posts, talk about what you love, and why. Write your gratefulness for local Aussie products you have been able to find for your business. Appreciate local community groups you can support thanks to the support of your customers.
In your front window pitch products people do not expect to see in their local newsagency. Your front window display has one job: to get people to notice it. Hopefully, they stop and look, and then step inside. Your window display must crash assumptions. It must be bold.
At your counter pitch products people do not associate with a newsagency counter. This means no chewing gum, everyday candy or similar. Have products people don’t associate with you. However, the need to be products easily purchased on impulse.
From the front door and for the first 3 metres inside the shop pitch products people do not expect to see in a newsagency. And, change how it is displayed weekly. You want people saying things like this is nothing like a newsagency or every time I come here it’s changed. These types of comments tell you that you are getting things right.
The key to each of these steps is you offering in your newsagency business products people do not usually associate with a newsagency. That means buying from suppliers who do not traditionally supply newsagencies or go to the trade shows you might typically attend.
Playing outside what is expected for your type of business is key to you pushing back against the narrative of mainstream media that: Newsagencies in decline as demand for online content outstrips print media.
The decline in print media, which is between 10% and 12% a year currently, has nothing to do with newsagency closures in my opinion.
Some newsagency shops close because the lease is at an end and the owner has plans for elsewhere. Most close, however, because the newsagency is not relevant to today, which brings us back to product. The products you offer in your shop are the best way you can state your purpose, show your difference, ensure your relevance locally, and online.
It’s hard work, every day. As retailers who own and run our own businesses, we choose this. Our future is ours to make, and in doing so we need to take every opportunity to push back against the ill-informed narrative about our channel put about by mainstream media.
Here’s a quick video I did yesterday morning showing why it’s wrong to overthink your website when planning for it. I see too many retailers, including newsagents, overthink their website, wanting everything to be perfect, thinking they know exactly what people will buy.
We created www.hugsandlove.com.au for one of my own shops in suburban Melbourne. It took less than two weeks to go from idea to being live. We’ve spent nothing on marketing and we have quadrupled the product range since launch. We have been deliberately frugal in our investment in the website and lazy in terms of chasing sales – to show others what they could achieve even being time poor.
Also, we did not add any tech skills to the business to make the website happen.
In this video I step you through some of the transactions and explain how seeing these helped us evolve the website. I hope some find it useful.
How you approach creating and running a website for your shop is 100% up to you. This video is my experience for this website and this shop. It’s one of ten websites we have created over the years for my shops. Again, the goal was to mirror something any newsagent could do.
We are at a point in retail where having a website for your business is as essential as having a fax machine was decades ago – every business had one.
As I note in the video, this quick and dirty website of ours for this suburban shop will add $50,000 in retail sales in the first year. I can see that doubling the next year with small effort. $50,000 in sales is close to $25,000 in GP, for no additional labour or retail space overhead. That’s good for business. Double it and you’re at $50,000 hitting the bottom line profit of the business.
These results are coming from shoppers the business cannot easily reach by opening the front door of the shop. Every retailer would be happy for this type of growth on top of what the physical shop is achieving.
I know of newsagents doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year online. This is the financial opportunity anyone can chase. It starts with your first website and leaning into what it shows you.
Even though it is plenty of months away, products have already started flowing for the celebration of the Year of the Snake.
We have offered Chinese zodiac related products for years. This year, the Year of the Dragon, it has been worth thousands of dollars in revenue.
Several state governments are in on the opportunity, offering birth certificates tailored to the various zodiac characters. I mention this to show that interest is broad from the practical through to high end gifting, like coins valued at $5,000 and more.
Current search engine searches for Year of the Snake in Australia are at 12,000, making it an easy keyword to leverage. That will spike as the year draws closer. The Year of the Dragon searches, for example, peaked at 350,000 a month. Each search is an opportunity for retailers.
I’ve talked about this opportunity with several newsagents who said they did not have customers who would be interested. What I know for sure from online sales is that we don’t know what we don’t know. Chinese zodiac shoppers come in many forms across a broad age range and many social settings. And, people buy for different reasons: for their home, for friends and as an investment – this is certainly the case with high end coins.
I think local newsagencies offer and excellent opportunity for leveraging Chinese zodiac related products and gifts and while the Year of the Snake will not reach the peak interest we have seen in the Year of the Dragon, it is valuable. I think of the opportunity as a season. In my own case, that season passes easter and Father’s Day in commercial value to the business.
There are plenty of fringe seasonal opportunities like this with which we can engage to attract new shoppers to our businesses. It’s vital as new traffic is truly the lifeblood of our future in retail. If you are not attracting new shoppers you are not nurturing the value of your business given declines in core product categories.
If you are not sure about Chinese zodiac products, do some research. There is plenty of evidence of excellent product availability and ways you can promote these in the context of your newsagency business today.
Here are 6 things to do to rank higher with Google and other search engines:
Include brand in product names as that’s what people tend to search for.
Arrange products by brand, with the brand name in the collection URL.
Use blog posts to promote brands and branded products. Write these yourself. Try and not use AI generated content – search engines preference human created content.
Use keywords relevant to your business in the content on your website, keywords people are searching for.
Ask your suppliers to link to your website.
Optimise meta title and meta descriptions to accurately describe content.
Here’s how you can optimise meta titles and descriptions in Shopify:
Go to the product you want to edit in your Shopify admin.
Click “Edit” to open the product editor.
Scroll down to the “SEO” section.
Replace the default title with a concise and informative title that includes your target keyword.
Write a compelling description that accurately summarises your product.
Click the “Save” button to apply your updates.
Additional tips:
Incorporate target keywords naturally into your meta title and description.
Aim for a meta title around 50-60 characters and a meta description of 150-160 characters.
Use strong action verbs and a clear call to action.
Each week add new blog posts. Each post should be about a single product or a single brand. Talk about what you love about it. Be personal. Use a friendly and engaging tone. Write more than 350 words, ideally above 500 words. Refer back to your physical shop in the post. Use the product name or keyword or phrase you are targeting at least five times in the post – use it naturally though.
If you are not sure what keywords to target, ask someone. I provide this advice, based on data evidence, free to Tower and newsXpress customers. The data I source is through a platform I pay US$300 a month to access. It’s up to date for Australian keyword searches.
Keyword targeting in your content is key to the content driving your website higher in search engine results.
Yes, this is all hard work. Do it if you want to rank higher. A website is a forever hungry beast.
Two significant coin releases yesterday from the Royal Australian Mint provided a terrific traffic boost for newsagents with stock. Both the silver proof and decorative Festive Florals coins sold quickly, and well.
What’s beneficial about coin shoppers is that they typically purchase other items during the visit – around 70% of the time they do from our data. This makes coins an efficient product for us to stock.
This second coin, the silver proof, is another example of price not being a barrier. It sold out first with little concern opver the 4135.00 price tag.
Key to leveraging the customer visit is related products that will appeal to this shopper, that the shopper can include a coin collector, a Christmas seasonal buyer, a general collector or anyone buying for any of these. Irt takes a it to understand the various shopper personas. Once you do understand, you can make good coin. (Sorry about that!).
Five years ago newsagents (except for Post Offices) would not have had access to mint coins. Now, four mints supply products to the channel, delivering millions of dollars in revenue and more than this in terms of value of new shopper traffic.
Coins are a valuable opportunity and that value will grow into 2025 and beyond.
You’d have to be living under a rock to not be aware of challenging economic conditions being reported on daily. We are seeing the daily reporting play out in retail with people being more careful on what they spend. The number of people emailing and dropping in resumes to retailers has spiked over the last month. We receive resumes here at the office daily, way more than in years.
It’s a challenging economy. FYI, here is some of our advice I have shared with retailers:
The current economic conditions are not normal. You cannot trade as if they are normal.
Where possible, pitch Australian made. This lands well everyday, and especially in times of higher unemployment.
Show value through a loyalty offer with cash off the next purchase. Cash is better understood than points, and big business competitors can’t compete.
Stock what you know sells for you. Typically, your top 25 sellers are out of stock 20% of the time.
Make the in-store experience happy and welcoming.
Quit dead stock. If it’s not sold in 6 months, why is it on your shelves?
Expand the appeal of your business with products you’ve never stocked before and pitch them outside your business.
Reset the front 3 metres of your shop weekly. Give the shop a fresh feel.
Ensure every hour of labour cost on your roster delivers value.
Ask a supplier pitching a new product these questions:
Who is the customer?
How can I reach them?
How valuable are they to me over a year?
How many Google searches are there in Australia every month for this product?
When they search, what is the search text?
I mention this because suppliers, too, need to adjust their businesses to reflect the economic conditions.
On top of what you read and feel about the economy, retailers have just had to absorb a 3.75% wage increase and a .5% superannuation contribution increase. Add to this a minimum 5% annual increase in rent and a 33% increase in insurance and you can get a sense of the stress some will be under.
Suppliers can help by:
Ensuring stockists are listed on your website.
Linking to stockist websites from your website. Backlinks this are valuable.
Promoting your stockists regularly on social media.
Ensuring every contact has commercial value to the retailer.
Anything suppliers can do to help newsagents and other retailers make their businesses more valuable is appreciated.
The alternative to the action for retailers and suppliers noted here is to do nothing, to treat things as business as usual. That’s not a smart move in my opinion. Whether our businesses are experiencing challenges or not, there is enough noise out there to indicate action is needed.
The latest issue of Channel magazIne published by ALNA includes a four-page spread on Transforming Your Newsagency. I am grateful to ALNA for publishing my article. Click here for a copy of the article. I urge newsagents to read it as the article contains advice anyone can act on today without spending any money.
newsXpress is hosting a national conference next month and has set aside spaces for non newsXpress members to participate at no cost.
Here is the announcement I shared with newsXpress members:
newsXpressNationalConference. Melbourne, September 8, 9 & 10.
In the newsXpressmember community, I see a powerful force: a community of passionate small business owners. We may run different shops, cater to different customers, but we share a common ground – the drive to succeed, to build, and to serve our communities.
The world throws challenges our way, from economic shifts to ever-changing consumer trends. But here’s the secret weapon of small businesses: we are not alone. This conference is about the power of “Together We Can.”
We can share best practices, learn from each other’s triumphs (and maybe even a few stumbles!), and build a network of support that strengthens us all.
So, let’s use this conference to connect, collaborate, and unlock the incredible potential we have together. Together, we can navigate any challenge, seize every opportunity, and create a thriving future for our businesses and our communities.
Monday is a full business day, focussed on sharing insights on newsagency retail transformation and how to execute this on a limited budget.
We will look to 2025 and beyond and consider ways we can make our businesses more resilient and valuable.
We’ll talk through how we can better support each other.
And, we will consider how to navigate challenges faced baby legacy products.
This is a conference for retail newsagents, designed to offer support and encouragement, to help us all find an enjoyable path to the future.
Thants to supplier support and support from newsXpress itself, participation is free.
If you are interested, please email help@newsxpress.com.au.
At the we conference, we anticipate we will launch an exclusive for newsXpress members range of limited-edition products with a significant partner already delivering terrific traffic and sales for newsXpress members.
Here what to expect at the conference:
Networking. You’ll get to meet fellow newsXpress members. This is thebiggest value members tell us about conferences. Catching up with others in a relaxed environment. Sharing, learning, nurturing.
It’s a no pressure event.
You can provide feedback we use to shape what the group does and offers.
You will be presented actionable opportunities.
Have a laugh.
Challenged. Not openly, not in public. Listening to the sessions though some of what you currently do may be challenges, and that’s good because change is vital.
Energised. We’re sure you will come away with an action plan.
If you’re an introvert and are concerned that you’ll find it uncomfortable. Hang out with me, we can talk one on one, privately. There will be plenty of us introverts at theconference.
“A typical country town newsagency today should be making less than 10% of their turnover from print media products, 30% of revenue from lottery commission and 60% from gifts, homewares, books, toys and more. That is, 60% of revenue from items delivering 50% and more gross profit.”
Fletcher has long been a critic of the support newsagencies received from publishers over the years. But he notes it should not be the reason for a failing business.
“You can’t blame the decline in print for newsagencies closing. Newsagents make a paltry margin from print products. It’s disrespectful, and embarrassing how little we make. A business closing because of this is a business rooted in the past.
“Smart newsagents started transforming their businesses 20 years ago.”
Fletcher finished with a final blast for ABC News:
“If the folks at ABC News did even basic research about the future of Australian newsagencies they could have provided more accurate reporting on the state of newsagency businesses in Australia.
“Do better ABC News.”
I am thankful to get this support for the channel out there compared to the reported comments by Brendan Tohill from VANA. Sheesh.
Let’s take a moment to look at the performance of print media products in our shops and for our channel.
Newspapers.
Newsagents make between 10% and 12.5% of the cover price. For the Herald Sun Monday to Friday, that’s .375 cents a copy. @ 50 copies a day, that’s $18.75. Considering the weekend cover price and sales, a medium size newsagency, selling 50 copies of the title each day will make under $7,000 a year in gross profit. Labour cost for managing the title over the year in that size business will be at least $4,500 while retail space will cost at least $2,000 without considering a premium for better positioning in-store.
Newspapers remain inefficient products. Around 75% of newspaper purchases are a single newspaper. I know this because of basket analysis for hundreds of newsagencies over many years. No amount of in-store effort has been successful in changing the basket efficiency of newsagencies.
Magazines.
Newsagents make 25% of the cover price. Thanks to cover price suppression of major titles, in real terms we make less today than five years ago.
In an average size newsagency selling $80,000 worth of magazines a year, gross profit is $20,000.00. Labour cost for the year managing magazines is $12,000.00. That can balloon out if there in an increase in missed deliveries. Theft of magazines costs around $2,000 a year, which lands at net $1,500.00. (My understanding is that supermarkets do not cover the cost of magazine theft.) magazine space in this average newsagency costs around $15,000.00. This average newsagency is losing money on magazines.
Magazines are more efficient than newspapers with single product baskets accounting for only 40% of all baskets.
Traffic generators.
For more than five years, print media products have not been valuable traffic generators for newsagents. While for sure that are people buying the daily paper or their weekly magazines, those shoppers are not the valuable shoppers that make money for newsagents. Indeed, thanks to basket analysis and tracking loyalty offer engagement, magazines especially are the impulse purchase if a shopper has bonus loyalty dollars to spend.
Print media suppliers don’t understand.
Our print media suppliers have management practices that are out of date, rooted in the days when our channel was tightly regulated. These poor practices cost us money. They think their products drive valuable traffic for us. They don’t. They think they make good money for us. They don’t.
Print media does matter tho.
What we don’t know is the value of print media customers who, on other visits, purchase other items from our shops. There is anecdotal evidence, but nothing you could rely on in court. The may to make the category work is to tightly manage space and hope that suppliers lift their game and drag their data management processes into 2024.
Why plenty of newsagents are thriving.
Many newsagents have transitioned their businesses to sell high end gifts, sought after collectibles and other products people will drive and hour or two to source. We have newsagents doing well with books and others doing well with coffee. Many newsagents have websites that reach people way beyond their local area. Some, too, with websites that have nothing to do with their newsagency businesses.
The shingle.
While news outlets and suppliers consider us a channel, we’re not a channel and have not been for many years. You can’t go into a newsagency expecting they will have what you want if your expectation is rooted in decades ago.
I don’t think the shingle matters. What matters is what shoppers feel when they enter your businesses. If they step into a shop that nurtures a feeling of comfort and happiness and offers them a treasure hunt retail experience they will tell others, and they will come back. The shingle above the door is irrelevant.
This is what’s interesting abut plenty of newsagents today. They are retailers, not agents, not shopkeepers. This is what the poor reporting of the ABC neglected.
Here, again, are videos I have done with the owners of three newsagencies that are anything but traditional newsagency businesses. Each business is inspiring:
The Aussie newsagency has as bright a future as each newsagency business owner allows.
