retail

The cardboard magazine fixture under the wrapping in the photo is now four months old. It’s been on the shop floor every day since we received it. Two weeks after its initial purpose was done, we dressed the stand for another title, then another and another.

Girlfriend is the latest magazine to benefit from the stand. Travis at our Frankston newsagency is responsible for this piece of art.

We are committed to not only recycling unsold newspapers and magazines but also old fixtures – giving them many lives by re-dressing them appropriately for other titles.

It would be good for magazine publishers and distributors to encourage this recycling – why not offer a prize for the best every month, something to encourage newsagents to recycle these disposable fixtures more?

The particular stand we have used this week to support Girlfriend is ideal because it is well made. We also like it because it’s easy to move and place where we need it most.

Donna Hay is the magazine we are featuring in our giveaway space this week. This is the space we have reserved for magazines with what we consider to be the best giveaway in-store. The product is the hero in this display – that’s why we choose what we promote carefully. While displays like this don’t meet publisher requirements, they work.

Wrap around advertisements and promotions are growing in popularity on weekly magazines.This week New Idea and Woman’s Day have promotions wrapped around the cover – lip balm from Amcal and coffee from McCafe respectively. I have two issues:

1. When a magazine is put back on the shelf after browsing the wrap around catches and tears – making the magazine look damaged. Customers are less likely to purchase a copy with a damaged wraparound even if it is an advertisement or a promotion.
2. The promotions pitched on these wraparounds usually require redemption elsewhere – McCafe and Amcal are this week’s partner retailers. While I understand this is part of the promotion, driving traffic to other stores, sometimes it does not work for the newsagent since traffic is being driven to competitors.

I know I can’t get the wraparounds dropped – I am guessing they are too valuable for the publishers. I wish there was a way for them to not get trashed when put back on the shelf. of course, in new style fixturing it does not happed as there is one deep shelf for 50 or so copies. However, newsagents don;t have that. They have pocket based fixturing and the reuslt is the magazines get trashed, and flyers get lost. This wastage must have a cost to the promotion.

I don’t feel the same about the wraparounds as I do abut the post-it ads on newspaper mastheads. Magazines are not the same as as a newspaper. Also, the wraparounds are on the lower corner of the magazine cover and not across the masthead or important news.

Unlike weekly magazines, monthlies each have different sales decay curves. Knowing the decay for a monthly is important because it lets us know when we have the best low-hanging fruit opportunity. With Australian Women’s Weekly in one of our stores it’s the first week. If we promote hard in this time we can more easily boost sales than if we promote later in the four week on sale period. The challenge is promotional material – ACP tends to supply promotional material in week two or three.

Last week, with one posted available, we created minimalist display with the product the hero. It’s worked. Sales are stronger than our average decay curve for the last six issues.

We have more magazines about specific English football clubs in stock than we have for AFL clubs. Hotspur, the official magazine of the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is just one of a range of titles. Even though we sell only one or two copies, they are highly browsed. I’ve watched the browsing recently and it’s beneficial for us – dad is reading about his club while mum and , sometimes, the kids, are spending money. This is another reason why I don’t have a this is not a library sign in my newsagencies.

Since ACP took a half share in OK! magazine we’ve seen considerably more promotional activity around this title. However, you can get too much of a good thing – OK! is the ACP feature magazine again this week meaning it’s supposed to go in a high traffic space. In many newsagencies there is only one such space. Too much of OK! and customers won’t notice. I’d rather see other titles pushed in the feature space and smarter promotional opportunities used of OK! like a counter strategy, a co-location strategy or even a free sample offer. Just increasing the cycle of promotions is not enough – we have seen from our own activity that sometimes smaller displays in unique locations in-store can work better than the best display ever in the usual high traffic location.

I’d expect The Monthly to sell well this month thanks to its Kerry Packer related cover story on the fate of The Bulletin magazine.

The cover itself is stunning and stands out on the shelves.  We have placed the title at our newspaper stand since it attracts more traffic than the usual area where would display The Monthly.

Fewer newsagency designs today have the ‘bag shelf’, the flat shelf on the counter on which customers used to rest bags. We have one in our Frankston location – the photo shows half the length of the bag shelf. I thought it looked out of date and was planning for it to be eliminated in our refit. The fact is, this shelf works. Magazines sell well – even though people rest their bags and other things on there when making purchases. We’re able to promote themes (as shown in the photo) as well as the high volume titles. So, I am looking at counter options which maintain this premium display space in a back to the future move. As the old saying says, if it ain’t broke…

The reality is, over time I expect the bag rail to become redundant – in a few years as more magazine traffic moves online. So, the new bag rail will be done in such a way that we have flexibility to place other products at the counter. This is key to newsagency design today – flexibility in fixturing.

For our next round of changes the bag shelf remains.  But we may tweak it to leverage more sales from the real-estate but more on that another time.