The retail pack for the FIFA World Cup Sticker Collection is not ideal for use in retail. Instead of being the retail-friendly merchandiser we expected, it was a box holding product that we need to modify if it’s to be put on display in store. The publisher could have done a better job. to help us more easily merchandise this product.
Coke vending machines that only sell Coke are a relic of an era long past. The latest generation Coke vending machines offer entertainment and opportunities for fun with the core goal of getting you engaged with their brand.
Coke knows that engagement = sales.
The Coke corporate website has examples of tremendously innovative Coke vending machines. I mention this today because many newsagents sell Coke. For us to make the most of the opportunity we need to stay connected with the broader campaign supporting the brand.
As I mentioned in January last year, the worldwide Coke happiness campaign is extraordinarily successful and enjoyable.
Fairfax reports today NSW schools are banning Loom Bands. Instead, the schools should consider congratulating kids for making something rather than watching TV or playing on their phone or tablet device.
This quote from the WH Smith interim (six month) report released a couple of days ago speaks to the importance of reconfiguring retail space:
Optimal use of space is a fundamental part of the strategy for High Street, as we look to maximise profitability today in ways that are sustainable for future years. We work our space to maximise return on every metre drop in every store through improving margins, reducing costs and driving third party income opportunities. Each individual store has a specific space reconfiguration twice a year driven by many years worth of detailed space and product elasticity data.
The highlight in the quote is mine. I urge newsagents to take note of this.
Remember, in the UK, where the company has most high street stores, it competes with businesses like newsagencies. This quote and others in the statement speak to how a competitor operates. It’s very relevant for Australian newsagents.
Check out the window I saw at a Forever 21 retail store last week. Whereas in the past valuable window space would be promoting the latest season fashion products available in-store, this window is promoting 24/7 connection / shopping with Forever 21.
National and international retailers are all over 24/7 shopping. More and more are using their retail shops to promote other ways to shop with their business.
In addition to the challenges we face in several traditional newsagency product categories, we have this challenge of 24/7 retail, a challenge many newsagents don’t know how to confront. The best place to start is via social media: Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Check out the sign I noticed in the window of a shop in The Strand Arcade in Sydney.
There were four signs like this in the window. Each with text unrelated to the products being sold but related in that the statements were complex, interesting like the menswear products being sold.
What struck me was the use of space in the window by the retailer to not overtly try and promote products but rather to attract and interest a type of customer. Very smart. I noticed.
The borders between retail businesses are more blurred now than ever. We are all playing outside what is usual for our respective retail category. Coupled with this is a reduction in loyalty due to online businesses and the blurred borders between retail niches.
The blurred borders make our windows and front-of-store displays more important than ever in attracting new shopper traffic.
We buy products specifically to use them to lure passers-by to the lease line and then into the shop. We change the pitch facing into the mall a couple of times a week, offering a different pitch to weekend traffic than we offer to weekday traffic. The Slumbies are a good example of us playing outside traditional newsagency space. I watched yesterday as the display attracted young girls an mums. The commitment to promoting products outside what people expect works. It’s vitally important to us.
Take a look at what you present to shoppers walking past today. Is it attracting people who would not usually shop in a newsagency? In not, you’re not keeping up.
Check out a new style meat shop in Glenferrie Road hawthorn that I saw this morning. I call it a meat shop as that’s what it is.
This is not a butcher, certainly not what I’d expect a butcher to look like.
Branding themselves as The Meat Cellar separates this business from butcher businesses. In doing so they change the expectation of shoppers, they pitch themselves as specialists.
The days of similar small business retailers trading under a common name are over. Specialisation is the key – under a group banner or under your own name – what you call your business and how you present it on the high street or in the mall positions your point of difference.
With the gap between good / successful retailers and bad / unsuccessful widening – as evidenced in the recent newsagency benchmark study results – connecting your business with the worst is not ideal. I suspect this thinking played a role in the development and branding of The Meat Cellar.
By the way – if you love cooking and eating meat, you must check this place out.
Given the increasing presence of WH Smith in Australia – they are opening more stores and have reportedly taken over Wild cards and gifts (I say reportedly since WH Smith has not made an announcement) – I am planning a few posts about them.
Zoodle is a kids retail format from WH Smith at Melbourne Airport in International Departures. The Melbourne store was the first Zoodle. It opened late 2012. the first UK Zoodle opened in February 2013.
Zoodle is an interesting shop – 100% focused on kids and those who shop for kids. It’s bright and fun. It featured international brands like Lego, Hello Kitty, Peppa Pig and Where’s Wally. Brands are vitally important in the kids market.
What’s interesting about Zoodle is that WH Smith has two other shops within a few metres of Zoodle yet this kids shop is stand-alone. While I am no expert, to me, their approach speaks to the value of retail specialisation in a separate format rather than including that format in a bigger store.
7:30 on ABC TV last night had an excellent story about security for credit and eftpos card use. The report showed why the move to compulsory pin use is important and how the technology we use here in Australia is more advanced than the US – where significant data breaches have occurred in recent months.
Retail is changing in many ways and quickly. With space costing more, landlords and retailers are looking for new models to through which to drive value. We are seeing more smaller shops open than ever before.
Years ago there was a trend for large newsagencies – 300, 400, 500 square metres with coffee shops and other stores within the store. Now the trend in shopping malls is for newsagencies to be close to 100 square metres.
On Tuesday I saw one of the smallest shops ever, a ‘cafe’ in Auckland. Click on the photo to see how big / small the My Kitchen business is. It’s as wide as a doorway. They serve meals from a space that is smaller than a kitchen.
My Kitchen is one of many similar-sized stores I saw in Auckland, reflecting a trend I’ve not yet seen on this scale in Australian capital cities and shopping malls. It’s similar to some malls I have seen in China but there retail is quite different. What I saw in Auckland was these tiny shops mixed in with larger businesses – where a larger size space has been slices into a number of these micro spaces.
These trends are interesting but we need to be cautious as retail rends are like fashion – they take on quickly and fade even faster. The key for being a trend retailer is getting out ahead of the fall. That said, this apparent trend to micro tenancies could be here for a while if it means landlords can improve their return per square metre.
I’m not sure I can see a newsagency in a space of three square metres (or less) but I could see part of a newsagency.
This is a poster at the front of a BE COSY story looking for new employees. The pitch itself is promoting the business which is smart. Whereas here in Australia we’d put out a sign saying staff wanted, many corporate Asian businesses that I have seen promote the business – probably reflecting the more competitive environment.
No matter where I turned in New York in shops closest to what a newsagency is, brands were in full shop, used as traffic drivers. In toy shops, stationery shops, card shops and gift shops, they were featuring brands front of store and rear of store (as shown in the photo from FAo Schwartz where the Barbie wall is at the rear) to engage shoppers.
Regulars here would know that I think brands are vital and that we newsagents ignore them at our peril. This latest trip has reinforced this view.
The other aspects of well-known consumer brands is that they usually support us with marketing and collateral.
When I was at FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue a few days ago there was a cookie party running in, where else, the cookie party room. The kids appears to be having a great time.
The lighting for this space was different to the rest of the store, giving it a feeling of being it’s own space.
This is an excellent example of retail theatre and while we can;t run a cookie party in a newsagency (or can we??!) there are plenty of other interactive events we can run. Depending on our specialisation, we could have space set aside and offer regular events as a practical demonstration of and commitment to our key point of difference.
Experts at the National Retail Federation conference and the Retail’s Big Ideas Show I have spoken with offer no support for in-store kiosks. I think this is because technology has changed so much and much of what a kiosk was used for in the past can either be transacted from home, mobile or on the POS itself. This is a shift from a few years ago.
While there are kiosks in use, they tend to be out of store and more for lookup like finding a store, checking on for travel or buying event tickets. Or like buying rasors as shown in the photo I took yesterday.
The other reasons kiosks are not a future is because they disrupt the core of your business – if your business has a core focus. And, of course, in retail today we must have a core focus. The days of the general store type newsagency are over. retail has evolved quickly where specialisation and core focus are key.
But back to kiosks. Retail is rapidly moving out of store. More and more that a retail business offers is transacted away from the business. Any investment in kiosk needs to be considered against these trends.
I thought the first party store I visited in New York might have been so big because it was the main destination store. This store, where I took the photo, was – I guess – two thousand square metres. The fifteen or so aisles – like the one in the photo – were stacked with products that are party related.
Over the course of several days I have seen another five or six party stores and while not as big as this one, they were sizeable. While these business exist to serve needs, their very range and presentation creates demand by showing people how to create parties and events they otherwise might not have created.
Of course, being in a location with an extraordinary population density such as New York gives retailers opportunities of scale unlike what we see in Australia. That said, my take away from the party shops is that this is a retail category where we can create demand through range and shop floor theatre. The alternative is to serve only as a destination business – this will constrain us to serving only destination shoppers.
Urban Outfitters is a funky fashion, kinda homewares and kinda impulse items chain that always connects well with current trends. Check out the display of vinyl records in the foreground and the players for these in the background.
I’ve been in three Urban Outfitters stores this trip and each has this. This is a company that knows what it’s doing and would only make such a inventory / floorspace investment if they were certain of a return.
Venturing into an area like this is not only about immediate sales, it is also about appealing to shoppers who like to see that you have the items.
Further to my recent posts about colour blocking in retail, check of the photo of the window of a storage business in New York. They are showing there is no limit to what can be colour blocked. Coat hangers! Amazing.
I only noticed the window because of the colour blocking. The first goal of visual merchandising is to get a display noticed. The colour of the display makes hangars more appealing.
I am amazed of the size of Valentine’s Day across a range of retail businesses in the US. It all starts with the the people you would / could purchase Valentine’s Day cards for. Take the photo – it’s a Valentine’s Day card from your cat (yes it’s in the wrong pocket as the header card says from dog).
A Valentine’s Day card from your cat?! As a retailer, I’d love the season to reach this level in Australia. I’d love to sell Valentines Day cards from your pets, to your pets, to teachers, neighbours, pastors, parents, grandparents, kids. I’ve seen packs of cards for kids to give to fellow students. The season would grow tremendously for us.
That said, I suspect Australians would not approach the broad range of captions I am seeing here in the US. We’d need to educate them to show that the season is about more than it has been, that it’s about appreciation.
We’re enjoying terrific success by featuring our range of magic products at the front of the shop on the lease line – facing into the mall. The success is in the form of shoppers the display attracts as much as product sales. Being in a shopping mall what we display at the front of the business is vital to attracting people who are in the centre and had not planned to visit a newsagency this visit. Our goal is to present products that challenge their perception of a newsagency.
The pre and post Christmas rush, crush and tumble in shopping centres is enough to test the nerves of even the most hardened retailer and most experienced shopper. It’s the shopping amateurs who make it difficult, the people who shop less than ten times a year who slow us down and detract from our experience. yet it’s these people we crave as they spend big when bedazzled by the bright lights of Christmas retail.
What to do? How to deal with these retail amateurs?
Here are my rant and rules for amateur shoppers and the busy retail season generally. Feel free to add more – it’s therapeutic.
Car parking, well that’s a whole separate topic.
Before you think I am a bitter and hate-filled retailer in need of retirement … while there are some truths in what I’ve written, it’s mainly in fun … oh, and therapeutic.
I saw a kid getting their photo taken next to the Hallmark Christmas countdown we have out the front of the newsagency today. Especially in the last week the countdown works a treat at signposting cards and providing interactivity with younger shoppers.
Hallmark does this well and have done for many years.
These small plastic rings that light up sell easily at the counter. Kids eyes light up when they see them. They are a perfect counter line.
Two days ago a male customer in his late seventies was belittling his female companion, aged in her late thirties. I heard him snap get over here – that’s when I noticed them. At the counter while the he bought a card, she noticed the rings.
It’s what happened next that shocked me. After completing the card transaction he asked how much the plastic rings were, I told him and he bought one. The lady put a ring on her finger and beamed a wide smile. The guy turned to me over his shoulder as he walked behind his partner and said: that’ll keep her quiet as he rolled his eyes and raised his eyebrows.
You see some awful things in retail some days.
