I have been told by four people that VANA has been hosting invitation only secret meetings with newsagents in Victoria to encourage them to sign up to a $495.00 a month (inc. GST) trial program which they claim will increase gross profit. Everything about the project sounds like a marketing group. VANA identifies it as such by the services on offer and by saying they do not want Nextra and newsXpress members involved.
Considerable fear is being demonstrated by VANA about this secret project.
The information I have seen reminds me of a project VANA proposed between ten and fifteen years ago, back when Peter Jordan was CEO. The project back then, as today, was developed by an external consultant. While VANA says this will be industry owned, it is the consultant who I would expect to make serious money – and makes a mockery of the claim of industry ownership. I actually don;t care about who owns commercail opportunities put to newsagents – the keys are true value and transparency. VANA is vague about both.
VANA would be better served focusing on delivering members services. It is an association after all. The $200,000 I hear bandied about on this project could be better spent serving members with practical association services.
Victorians have a choice between Newspower, Nextra, newsXpress and Supanews. For a channel with around 650 outlets in Victoria I would have thought that four marketing groups from whcih to choose was ample. If VANA wanted an alternative offer, why not work with an existing player – Newspower makes sense since VANA already has a share in that group.
This move by VANA is more fracturing of the industry by an Association which appears to have forgotten that it is an Association.
If I were on the Board of VANA, I would push for the organisation to focus on:
- Pursuing, without fear or favour, a fairer and more equitable magazine supply model for all Victorian newsagents
- Private and public lobbying around achieving a fair return for home delivery of newspapers for all Victorian newsagents
- Lobbying the State and Federal Government for assistance to help all Victorian newsagents navigate the significant change ahead
- Establishing a register (benchmark) of supplier terms which VANA members could use to compare terms they have been offered
- Working with GNS, the industry owned stationery supplier to build a strong consistent statewide stationery business in all Victorian newsagencies
Once sufficient progress has been made on these five key areas and if VANA had resources available, I would push for what I would call phase two of the reinvention of VANA. I’ll leave those thoughts for another time.
VANA failed its members abysmally on Bill Express. It was not until the public meeting which Adam de Jong and I organised that VANA woke, briefly, on Bill Express. Because of their lack of leadership, some Victorian newsagents paid money for Bill Express equipment which they should not have paid.
I am a VANA member. I am also a shareholder in newsXpress, a marketing group for newsagents.
