newsagency of the future

Thank you to those who could join the website discussion yesterday morning. I am doing this again today, Wednesday, at 10am 10am Melbourne time, talking about POS software connected Shopify websites. Anyone can join. No booking necessary.

Bring your questions or concerns about selling online. Our goal is to provide useful facts that could help guide your own business decisions. I think we could speak more about shipping, loyalty and bundles.

Here is the link for today @ 10am:
https://zoom.us/j/99483113349?pwd=UG1vRThSeThjZm14YVRoamNiSG5NUT09
Meeting ID: 994 8311 3349 Passcode: 830738

Click here to access our website customer questionnaire. This is designed to help you clarify your needs. A copy of your responses is sent to you.

The Zoom meeting yesterday with retailers about the first steps toward selling online had 30 or so participants. I am hosting the same session this morning at 10am for anyone interested.

Here is an email I sent to newsagents yesterday, announcing two free workshops, today and tomorrow, for anyone considering a website for their retail business:

The next session will be Tuesday morning, August 24, at 10am. Here is the link:

https://zoom.us/j/93217163735?pwd=Y2ZHUlcrQ0s3dkJoS2c5dm5Wc2kzUT09
Meeting ID: 932 1716 3735 Passcode: 847150

Any one is welcome to join. You don’t need to book, click on the link and show up.

I hope the sessions will be informative and offer you a pathway to getting online if that is what you want, getting more online shoppers if that is what you need or sorting out whether online is right for you, if that is where you are at.

Selling online is hard and relentless work. There are no shortcuts. But, there are decisions you can make to narrow your focus, so you can have some early learning opportunities.

Based on what we are seeing and based on the data from major retailers here, online is contributing more and more to business bottom line. What Covid has done is speed up that transition.

Oh, and if you think online is not impacting you or not being used by your shoppers, based on my experience I am sure it is. Hopefully, we can offer advice that helps you see what is next for you online.

I have spent time last week writing up to date marketing material for my newsagency marketing group newsXpress. The new document is called Think Outside the Box. I went with this title for a number of reasons, including these below, which I have included in the document:

Thinking outside the box: is it more than slick marketing?

This thinking outside the box pitch is real, backed by actionable items you can take. You can bank on it.

The newsagency channel was created in the 1880s to distribute a magazine through the goldfields of Victoria. Some of the agency arrangements put in place then can be seen in business arrangements today.

While we understand and respect the history of the channel, the future for our shops is the future. It’s nothing like those goldfield days.

Making the most of the opportunities of the future is about thinking outside the box.

What you sell. How you sell. When you sell. The customers you sell to. It’s all up for grabs, there for the taking. It starts with the narrative of your business, how you pitch yourself.

Thinking outside the box can include letting go of some things that don’t make money and don’t, as Marie Kondo says, spark joy.

Thinking outside the box can include you trying products you never thought would work.

Thinking outside the box can include you fundamentally changing supplier relationships, with you in control.

How far you think outside the box is 100% up to you. Our job is to pitch ideas and opportunities. What you do with them is up to you. Once you decide, we can help with practical steps.

While we understand that for plenty of newsagents, old-school products and services are valuable, their value is declining. Acting now, in new ways, outside the box ways, can protect your business against those declines.

You’re not alone outside the box. We help you, work with you, hold your hand and encourage you – as much or as little as you want.

For each of us in business, what we achieve is up to us. Our future is about how much we think outside the box today.

…

The document goes into specifics, the how and why of newsXpress, what differentiates its offer to newsagents.

Fintechs, Finance Technology businesses, are businesses leveraging technology to disrupt banking and banking related businesses.

In an excellent article, Fintechs Are Zeroing in on Everything Big Banks Aren’t,  published at Medium, Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at New York University, explores the challenge of energetic tech-driven start-ups on old, well-established and risk-averse banks.

The article is relevant to small business newsagency outlets in Australia as it deals with the challenge of an old business model, a model too many in the banking channel rely on today, and, in our case, too many newsagents.

Banks built success on location, their branch network, as did our channel. Tech b being leveraged by finch businesses makes location irrelevant. This is true for many of the products and services we sell, even more so than we probably currently imagine.

Another, easier (and more fun) indicator of ripeness is the eighties test. Put yourself smack dab in the center of the store/product/service, close your eyes, spin around three times, open your eyes, and ask if you’d know within 5 seconds that you were not in 1985. Theaters, grocery stores, gas stations, dry cleaners, university classes, doctor’s offices, and banks still feel as if you could run into Ally Sheedy or The Bangles.

The article engaged me because when galloway talks about banks and their old way of doing business today, he could equally be writing about our channel. Now, I am not being crucial about newsagents here. no, my criticism is more focussed on our suppliers. Their business practices and processes, which they demand we follow, are rooted in history, rooted in the past, and rooting out businesses negatively.

As fintechs are disrupting the banks, there are others out there disrupting us. This includes suppliers who are building and promotion their own direct to consumer pathways, Tabcorp, Are Media, News Corp, Nine Media, and more.

Start-ups are all about being lean and not being beholden to doing something a certain way because that is how it has always been done. Our channel has 140+ years of history, making it hard to be lean and energetic in our business practices.

We have to find ways of reinventing ourselves. This takes courage. It also requires us to let go of some things, which is not a popular view in our channel, especially among the old-school and those aligned with suppliers. But, we must, for our future is to be found in being like a finch business disrupting a bank … being nimble, smart, engaged and fast.

Footnote: This post focusses on retail since in the distribution space, the newspaper home delivery space, the publishers have stripped that from us, without fair compensation, and we let them.

Frida Kahlo is an artist from Mexico, who lived from 1907 to 1954. Her art consisted mainly of self portraits. She is considered a feminist icon, and rightly so. Interest in her has grown in recent years through careful management of licences associated with her.

We have several suppliers to our channel with Frida Kahlo products. There are cards, journals, calendar, cushions, wrap and more. These are items bought by and for, primarily, women, 25 to 50.

This is why Frida Kahlo matters. But let me add to that. through search data, we can see that every day Aussies are search Frida Kahlo online. Here is current search data:

When I am considering Licenced product for my shops, I look at search data as it is real, current and accurate. It helps me assess the interest in this licence over another licence and that can sway my purchasing.

This research into online searches also helps determine the value of buying products from multiple suppliers for a licence. This is the case with the Frida Kahlo brand. The 12,100 searches for the specific brand are interesting. Expand the consideration to all associated keywords and you have 82,700 searches a month in Australia. That makes it a commercially viable brand. Also, thanks too the search data I can access, I can see the sites people go to for their Frida Kahlo fix, and this can guide how I represent the brand in-store.

All of this speaks to the importance of data in guiding retail business decisions. It also speaks to what we have to do in considering what to sell in ur shops. Retail is different today. We have more data available for decision making. We have more options, too, thanks to more suppliers selling to us.

What people search for online is valuable as we evolve our retail businesses. It reveals more to you than you can know from those walking into or past your shop. It’s powerful data, and accessible data. It is vital that we tap into it, to understand opportunities, especially for Licenced product, like Frida Kahlo, which may have not been on our radar in the past.

Whereas previously we’d worry about the range of pens we had, the six of magazines in a category, our birthday card mix or some sub-$20 gift lines, today brand or licence driven retailers are able to broaden their appeal by sensitively tapping into respected brands that stand for something, by sourcing deeply into the brand across multiple suppliers.

It all starts with accurate search data. tap into that and you can tap into a well of new shopper traffic.

This is what the newsagency of the future needs to do – pursue growth through data.

In March this year newsXpress published a 50 page book, Achieving more, together.  in which it set out what newsXpress offers its member newsagents and how, specifically, newsXpress helps newsagents evolve their businesses, to find new shoppers and to run businesses that grow in value and relevance.

I wrote this book as I wanted to lay out in one place the what, why and how in relation to newsXpress and its mission of service for newsagents.

The reaction has been terrific. It’s wonderful seeing newsagents want to make their businesses more valuable.

The book was posted in March to 500 newsagents in hard copy while a soft copy version was provided to more. If you’d like a copy, please email me.

I have just recorded a podcast interview with a business advisory group in which the future of Australian newsagency businesses was a key topic.

It started off with dealing with some of the assumptions held by people, bankers, landlords, suppliers and shoppers, about newsagency businesses, that our day has past, our shops are out of date, that our businesses are dying and that the future is bleak. I appreciate the opportunity to put some evidence in front of those assumptions, to explain that not every newsagency is the same, that ma ny businesses in our channel are thriving.

It was interesting hearing the questions about the history of our channel and how that plays a role in decisions being made in newsagency businesses and some newsagency supplier businesses.

There is a broad understanding out there that Covid has been good for our channel and that as a result we have opportunities now mid 2021 that we may not have otherwise had. Indeed, the Covid pivot embraced by plenty in our channel was another key topic that we covered.

It was encouraging that they moved on from talking about old retail that is out of date and often with lights off. Plenty of time was spent on new categories and new opportunities newsagents are embracing.

My takeaway from the discussion is that there are plenty on the periphery of our channel, landlords, would-be suppliers and others who are interested in the evolution occurring in retail newsagency businesses. To me, this encourages confidence for the channel in that if others out there observing us are confident then we have even more reasons ourselves to be confident.

The best indicator, though, is the number of people keen to buy newsagencies. In my experience it is more today than for years now. It’s a good time for newsagents keen to sell in most locations.

This was my third such long-form discussion about the channel with professionals looking at the channel. The interest in what we are doing has increased. I see this fro newsagency business sales, landlord approaches, new supplier interest and some interesting major suppliers keen to engage in a fresh way. The next few years look to be very interesting for newsagents and those associated with them.

Amazon continues to dominate evolution in retail. The company’s latest move, a hair salon in the UK, is attracting plenty of interest, which is what the company wants.

Click here for a report from the Evening Standard newspaper.

Click here for a Forbes article on the move by Amazon.

Click here for analysis from The Motley Fool.

Here’s a user experience video:

Here’s a more tech level preview:

It’s easy to ignore this move as not relevant to non hair related retail or to dismiss it as hype. I think the move is another relevant and sticky shift by the company that will lead to more changes in retail.

Customers have been reacting well to the refreshed gift / homewares offer on the shop floor at one of my Westfield businesses.

The customer reaction has been terrific.