Good news newsagent story
It was good to see the Courier Mail publish a good story about newsagents with an article about Nextra Chermside yesterday.
Terrific June quarter for the newsagency
I’m thrilled with the June quarter results, especially for greeting cards – unit sales up by 20% and revenue up by 27%. Everyday counter, the core of the department say unit sales growth of 37% and revenue growth of 39%.
This is in a store with many competitors in the centre – major retailers with good card departments, specialty card and gift shops, supermarkets with cards as well as Typo, kikki.k and discount variety stores at the cheap end of the card space.
Cards account for 25.47% of our revenue – get them right and you know the rest of the business will benefit.
I think any newsagent can grow card sales in any situation. As I have written here several times recently, key to growth is promoting the category outside the business, to people who may not have considered purchasing cards from you.
I am starting to look at June benchmark study submissions and there are plenty of newsagents growing their businesses, plenty of results that challenge the stories of doom and gloom from some.
Gary commenting via this blog a few days ago saying: We have an industry in crisis. I am seeing data indicating for many there is no crisis.
Optimism sells at the newsagency counter
This range of optimistic cards is working a treat at the newsagency counter. They are from Affirmations in NSW. Customers comment about the positive messages. I can tell these products make people happier at the newsagency counter. The images and words slow people. They also provide us with an opportunity to pitch a point of difference.
This is an example of how a thoughtful placement at the counter can be helpful beyond sales achieved.
You know it’s working when a customer picks up the product and smiles a genuine and heartwarming smile.
I like to have products at the counter that are not what people expect at a newsagency counter as this is another way to disassociate fro the traditional newsagency.
Product selection is a key activity through which to redefine your business to those who shop with you.
I think too often newsagents stock items and police them where they do because of they think is expected of a traditional newsagency business. Traditional activity will deliver traditional results.
Justice League attracting male shoppers to the newsagency
The terrific floor display unit in the newsagency supporting Justice league licenced product is attracting new traffic. While predominantly male, younger kids do drag in parents including mums and sisters. This new traffic is valuable to be business – the shoppers attracted are purchasing other items from us and this is helping drive sales of magazines, gifts and cards.
Newsagents attract new traffic with the right products in the right location.
Foreign newspapers thicker than home town newspapers
With the shrinking in size of some capital city newspapers we are seeing some days when foreign language newspapers are thicker. This is a reminder of the importance of these newspapers to our businesses. Some foreign language titles are stronger than ever, not suffering the same sales decline of the major dailies. Their success is all too often unnoticed by newsagents.
This is great news as newsagencies are the prime retail outlets for foreign language newspapers. Foreign language are an opportunity we ought to embrace for our profit. They are an excellent example of good news in and for ur channel, good news which is too often overlooked.
Footnote: I included an image of this weekend’s Neos Kosmos because I like their front page tribute on the passing of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.
Optimism among newsagents
I was thrilled to hear and see optimism among newsagents at the newsXpress newsagency marketing group national conference in Melbourne Sunday afternoon through to last night. The up-beat mood was joyful to see and hear as was the talk about growth categories, business changes to chase and competition to tackle head-on.
There were 180 attendees at the conference, 125 newsagents – from large and small businesses located in the city, country and rural and trading in shopping centre and high street situations.
There was a trade show with plenty of non-traditional suppliers pitching products you can expect to make at least 50% GP and some offering as high as 70% on.
The conference sessions on Monday were about how we run our newsagency businesses and opportunities for new traffic and insights we can leverage for a brighter future. A couple of international speakers from one supplier shared insights that will benefit people for years.
The group visit to the Toy Fair yesterday was incredible in that it focused on growing even further into a category our channel owned decades ago and is a growth category as sales are wrested back from other retailers. Seeing 40 to 50 newsagents on a supplier stand for new product briefings and to purchase is a good sight.
I am a Director of newsXpress and was a speaker at the conference so I’d understand if you think this post is a commercial pitch. I have not written this to tell you to join newsXpress or to even promote the group.
The purpose of this post is to say that with the right people around you and the right supplier partners, optimism grows and optimism can help you see a path forward for your newsagency. You can find those right people and right suppliers in a number of places. It starts with you looking – and that’s what I urge newsagents to do. It does’t have to be a marketing group – but it should be more than you working alone.
These last few days have been a reminder of the value of friends working together and supporting each other on a shared goal.
Selling happiness in the retail newsagency
Selling happiness works best when the seller is happy. Imagine how a customer would feel brining a product promoting happiness to the counter and encountering a grumpy, or unhappy person serving them. If their frame of mind when selecting the item was happy they’d soon come thudding to the ground from the sales experience.
Happiness sells. The happier we are in our businesses the more customers will enjoy shopping with us and the more they will purchase.
We demonstrate our happiness through our interaction with customers, employees and suppliers. Our happiness can make others happy and a happy shop is more likely to be a successful shop.
I have been thinking about this these past few days at the Sydney gift fairs where I have seen plenty of products directly or indirectly nurturing happiness. it made me think about my shop face, the personality I present when working in the shop. It’s all about business, very focused. I suspect I’m not coming across as happy as I could / should – especially if selling happiness books like those in the photo.
Our demeanour in small business retail matters more than in big business. I think shoppers expect more from us. Our happiness and that of our team is more important than in our big business competitors.
While I don’t have any research I can easily point to backing up my claims, I suspect there will be others here who agree.
How happy do you present in your newsagency and does it matter?
Where is good news for newsagents? Here is good news for newsagents!
Almost every day there is optimism reflected in one or more posts here. While one or two think the benchmark results published today are negative, the results are actually positive because of the good news being experienced by some newsagents.
Optimism is in the eye of the beholder.
One of several items of good news in the results in the card department in my own newsagency. In a shopping centre with plenty of competition from majors as well as independents, card sales are up 16% year on year.
Others can achieve and are achieving similar success.
This is good news for the channel as it shows that independent newsagency businesses can compete – even when selling the same Hallmark cards that are in two supermarkets, two majors and several independents. Our independent newsagency competes on service and value and the result is 16% year on year growth.
This is good news as other newsagents can achieve this too. Sure it’s hard work and involved detailed business planning and running your own race sometimes against what a supplier wants. The results speak for themselves.
It’s not too late for newsagents to reinvent their businesses and to chase their own optimism.
Inspiring shoppers
Check out the sign I saw outside a shop in China on Sunday. It’s a simple feel-good message that pitches the business about being more than only selling products. Connecting with shoppers using a blackboard like this out the front of the shop is a good way to show that you are more than the products you promote.
7-Eleven Australia Post lockers challenge newsagents on parcels
I got my first look at Australia Post package pickup lockers a few days ago – at a 7-Eleven store.
Located at the front of the business, facing the fuel pumps and the street, the lockers are noticeable. The branding achieved by Australia Post in a 7-Eleven location is extraordinary. The apparent strong partnership between these two businesses should concern newsagents. It surprises me.
The newsagency channel should have had the front running on a closer commercial relationship with Australia Post given the number of newsagencies that are Licenced Post Offices. However, for the parcel pick up model Australia Post would have sought a partner offering easy parking, discipline and the ability to deal on a network wide scale. Newsagents don’t offer any of these.
I see the link between Australia Post and 7-Eleven on this parcel pickup project as a sign of a deeper relationship between the two giant organisations, one that could ultimately impact on newsagency businesses – LPOs and others as it is the type of relationship others will notice and make their decisions on.
Newsagents unhappy with a closer Australia Post / 7-Eleven relationship need to think about what the newsagency channel could have offered Australia Post that would have been more compelling than a 7-Eleven pitch. To that I say we could offer them nothing.
We need to have a realistic view of ourselves when considering the channel. I think we are more demanding than we deserve to be. Newspapers and magazines are the only categories connecting us and even they are done differently right across the channel: to different standards, to different scale and with a different future in mind.
Our independence and local ownership which we see as an asset are what lead organisations like Australia Post to look elsewhere.
The sky is not falling.
The lights are not flickering.
But we need to take note of these changes happening around us. We need to be aware of the strategies of networks like 7-Eleven. We need our own plan for our future that we can build around our business or those we are commercially connected with.
We need to look at moves like Australia Post working with 7-Eleven and know we’re okay because we know where we are going and how we are going to get there.
Soundtrack for optimism in 2015
I have been reading lately about optimism – what it is, how to nurture it and how to share it. It matters to me because it is too easy to be pulled to the negative view and to dwell there for too long.
I think 2015 can be an excellent year for newsagents and for the newsagency channel. I’m optimistic about the year ahead.
So, today I want to share some videos with you about optimism. The first video is from Imagine Dragons it’s the video for their On Top of the World hit. The lyrics speak to challenges we face:
And I know it’s hard when you’re falling down
And it’s a long way up when you hit the ground
Get up now, get up, get up now.
I wanted to start the year not talking about our businesses directly but instead through a prism of positivity for the year head.
I love this song. I hope you do too.
Sunday newsagency management tip: fail well
It’s natural to fear failure in personal and business life. Online and offline gossip about friends, colleagues, competitors and others is often about failure, intensifying our own fear of failure. Today, news of failure is amplified more than ever because of the ready access to the megaphones of social media.
My uneducated theory is that volume of gossip and talk by some about the failure of others reflects more about them than those of whom they speak. But that’s not what I want to write about this morning.
We need to embrace failure. Indeed, if we are to fail, we need to fail well.
By failing well, I mean we need to leverage value from the failure. This could be getting it right the next time, helping others from our experience, having fun with the failure or in some other practical and life lesson type way.
Every failure, large and small, presents the opportunity to fail well. Whether we do fail well is up to us. It is up what we do as a result of the failure. We can choose to fail or fail well. My management advice today is for us to fail well. This starts with us owning the failure. Next we have to think about how to leverage it. Finally, we need to talk about the experience with others, to share positives from the experience.
It could be that you have a dud product that you have brought into the business. Call it out. Have fun with it on the shop floor. I now of situations where this has been done in a fun way and the dud product has become a success. Think of some dreadful movie failures that have become cult classics and commercial successes.
If the failure is on a bigger scale, like a whole of business failure, own it, walk through it, learn from it and confront every challenge head on. The best advice I can give is to look ahead and take a small step at a time … oh, and don’t listen to those talking about you.
Running and hiding from failure denies you the opportunity to grow and others the opportunity to learn from your experience.
As for those who enjoy talking about the failure of others, ignore them for they live in a sad world.
Learning from looking at newsagencies and retail in the UK
Here’s a video shot this week where I explore some of the insights I picked up on my trip to the UK earlier this month – looking at retail and at the newsagency conference I attended.
The trip was instructive beyond what I cover in the brief video and some of the insights will play into a Newsagency of the Future series early in 2015.
A different approach to plush
I was surprised to see this Ugly Doll stand on a shop floor Monday. Maybe I am being obesely sensitive but this stand and the product name feel like a negative message to me. The Ugly Doll name alone calls out a difference which I think is unhelpful. But maybe the pitch has worked because I noticed it.
Plush products are happy and positive. This product does not feel like that.
Day one of five simple moves for increasing sales in your newsagency: leveraging high traffic locations
This week I am running a series of simple moves you can make in your newsagency to increase sales. None requires you to spend any money, only time.
Here is simple move to make more money from magazine customers.
Walk down your main magazine aisle and then walk from there to your counter – what do you pass along the way? What is promoted to shoppers walking this path? Do you disrupt shoppers as they walk this and other high-traffic routes in your newsagency?
Click on the photo and notice the card fixture we have placed facing shoppers as they exit the main magazine aisle. I have seen customers notice it when exiting the magazine aisle.
We have had this card unit in this location for couple of weeks. This is about as long as we like to have something here. Change is important – especially at the exit fro the magazine aisle as this is a path many regulars take and they become store blind.
Success with a product is often as much about placement as it is about the product itself. This is why an approach of continuous movement is important on the newsagency shop floor. Identifying key shopper traffic routs and leveraging these with tactical placement should help you increase your sales.
Newsagent confidence survey highlights challenges
Of the76 respondents to my Newsagents Confidence Survey over the weekend, 60% indicated their confidence has decreased this year and 67.11% said the confidence of their customers had decreased this year.
Click here to access the full survey results.
What I found interesting in the results is that 26.32 of responders are either very confident or somewhat confident about business right now. That’s a good base off of which to build greater confidence in the newsagency channel. The 27.65% who feel average confidence is okay as well.
The other aspect of the survey is the gap – between very confident and not confident at all.
Confidence can be driven by many factors including noise coming at us from all sorts of directions. The real indicator of confidence ought to be how our businesses are doing and this is often a function of the investment we make – not as much money as attention.
The confidence of our customers can be boosted by us presenting a more confident and optimistic business. This comes back to how our business looks and feels.
Quick survey on newsagent and shopper confidence
I’ve put together a quick four-question survey on newsagent and shopper confidence. With the shopper confidence survey results earlier this week I got to wondering where newsagents and their customers rate. I think it’s a useful health check for us to think about own own confidence levels re business and those of our customers. Click here to take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HN7RKLS
I’ll publish the full results here in a few days.
Voter spending sentiment in steep decline
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald today has a comment piece by Chief political correspondent Mark Kenny about the steep decline in spending sentiment among voters as measured in a Fairfax-Neilsen poll.
Shopper sentiment is, in part, driven by media coverage and today’s front page of The Age reports on and feeds into the survey results.
As retailers large and small have noted ow for several years, retail is tough. Australians have voted in a government that is pursuing policies that appear set to make things even tougher.
The best way for us to counter this decline in sentiment is for us to create retail environments that are cheerful and enjoyable, where people forget their worries and want to buy the optimism in our businesses.
We should not agree when people complain or say things are tough. No, we need to offer a response that pivots the conversation.
Great Tasmanian business story
Check out this terrific business success story from 7.30 on ABC TV of a Tasmanian lavender farm and their success with cuddly purple lavender bears.
The challenge of convenience retail for newsagents considering the switch
Newsagents contemplating transitioning their business to a convenience model need to thoroughly research the range of convenience retail offerings in Australia, and not just those nearby, before changing their business focus.
Convenience is about more than convenient hours or location. 7-Eleven, Coles and Woolworths have made it about value with every location every day offering nationally recognised products at discount prices.
The photo, taken a couple of weeks ago, shows a Coles Express outlet in Melbourne. Click on the image to see the clarity of their pitch on price. Count how many offers being pitched and the consistency of their marketing collateral – from the Coles express shingle to each of the posters and signs. The strength of their value proposition – it is obvious from far away. They are leveraging the nationally recognised Coles brand and their down down advertising campaign that focuses on price.
This is what newsagents who transition to a convenience offer need to compete with to be noticed – they will need to consistently make a professional and understandable pitch on price from outside the business to attract shoppers.
Attracting shoppers is important because convenience shoppers are fickle. There may be some customers who shop with you regularly because they walk past every day or catch public transport nearby but the majority of convenience business is new or infrequent visitors shopping with you.
The Coles pitch is clever, designed to get you thinking that everything is discounted when it’s not. But enough is discounted to support the value proposition once inside. Their goal is basket depth with fuel used as the anchor product.
The other aspect of the push over the last few years by 7-Eleven, Coles and Woolworths into fuel is that they are taking more convenience business from stand alone retailers, retailers without fuel like the old mill bars and delis. This is driving a change in shopper behaviour with people walking to one of the new style fuel outlets for what they would have purchased from the local milk bar or newsagency.
While CBD convenience outlets like City Convenience focus on being convenient (and certainly not price) as their point of difference, the convenience competitors most newsagents face will be a mixture of the price focused giants: 7-Eleven, Coles and Woolworths.
Newsagents wanting to play in the convenience need to thoroughly research their competitors and develop a model that is sustainable for a locally owned independent business. They need to make any move knowing what they will be up against in terms of the better supply terms and the consistent and professional marketing pitch of the majors.