A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Plush

Plush jumping out of the display

This may seem like a minor, almost obsessive point, but lifting plush, like the black and white beanie Boos in the phone, so they look like they are lifting themselves out of out unit.

This placement looks more active and fun than if they were flat on the shelf, their feet inside the unit. Such placement would also hide the green feet – a colourful feature.

We obsess about things like this, specific product placement to make products more appealing to shoppers. There is no doubt that placing these beanie Boos like they are reaching out helps us sell more.

We’re doing more that $1,000 a week in plush.

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Plush

Biker bears an early hit for Valentine’s Day

These biker bears sold very well for us last Valentine’s Day and we wondered if they had run their course – but we took them on anyway. It turns out they have not run their course.

Shoppers love these bears. They’re a fun break from the more traditional Valentine’s Day plush. They also open Valentine’s Day gift buying up to other shoppers and this is important.  One of our goals with each season this year is to get more people buying for the season, people who would not usually buy for it.

We have the biker bears displayed together as this looks more impressive than scattering them through the Valentine’s Day plush table.

Valentine’s Day is working a treat already!

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Gifts

Update on a the secondary plush move

A while back I wrote about our decision to create a secondary plush location in the middle of our stationery department. We needed to fill this gap until we made some other shop floor moves and to accommodate plush we could not fit into our plush department.

What was a stop-gap move has worked a treat. Sales from this spot in the photo have been excellent. Even the two rows down the bottom have been selling which is amazing given that we have these items in a spinner in the plush department.

The success of this spot is a reminder that breaking with rules and traditions is often good for business. It is also a reminder that shoppers do browse and purchase on impulse based on what they discover in-store. This spot is over half-way into the store and on the other side of the shop to our cards and gifts.

Footnote: Plush is now a separate department for us. We report on it separately and track its performance against key related departments – gifts and cards. What was once a seasonal focus is now key to our business plans for 2013 and beyond.

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Plush

Amazing Angry Birds plush sales

We took one of the large Angry Birds stands from Skansen and are set to sell out by Christmas. All it’s taken is a few weeks. Most purchases have been on impulse, some are from word of mouth referral.

W#hile the stand could have been better made to suit busy retail floor traffic, that has not hurt sales.

Our success with Angry Birds fits with my commitment to brands. Shoppers will pay a higher price and support a better martin for brand name product. While newsagents who stock cheap China product disagree with me, I have sales results to show that brands sell and deliver a healthy bottom line and contribute to an above average overall business GP%. This is vitally important for newsagents as we head into 2013, a year of considerable disruption for our channel.

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newsagency of the future
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