In the card aisle of one drug store – a convenience store on steroids – they have wine in the card aisle. I am guessing the placement near sympathy cards is not intentional. It gave me a laugh.
Good for them pitching wine to card shoppers though.
If we could sell wine, this is the type of display unit I’d like. Slim. Efficient. Easy to place.
A single pocket of Angel Flames candles at the counter can add valuable margin dollars to a purchase. We have done this many times over many years and each time we bring out the Angel Flames we get a terrific result. The pack is small, you could find room in any counter situation. The purchase opportunities are many. While the most obvious is a purchase with a greeting card or a gift, we have newspaper and magazine customers buying a pack or two on impulse.
Where we place product matters as much as keeping the offer fresh. This is why we don’t keep the candles at the counter all the time.
Check with your usual party goods supplier for these or similar products. Placed in the right spot, they can be tremendously valuable for your business. Customers will be thrilled – that’s a reaction I often see.
We’re promoting the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens with this display at the entrance to the main magazine aisle. Within minutes of putting in place yesterday I saw a customer purchase off it. They had selected a greeting card and was walking past the stand to the counter. I suspect this customer would not have gone into the magazine. This type of impulse purchase is important for us – we achieve it by tactical placement.
With a surge in holiday travelling we are seeing many new faces. Our team has been leveraging this opportunity with this excellent aisle end display promoting puzzle titles. I was thrilled to walk into the shop and see the initiative they had taken – inncluding the crossword art backdrop and the eye-catching sign. This display is placed at the entrance on the right to our main magazine aisle and on the left to plush and newspapers.
I put Your Garden in this impulse purchase location on the weekend and shoppers bought the title. I rate this free standing single title floor unit as the most effective I have used in a newsagency. Choose the right title, place the unit in the right location and you can achieve better sales than if you were to do a display on a power end. Being tactical can drive magazine sales.
We are fair to suppliers who invest in quality floor display units by only using the unit for their stock and through placement that drives sales.
Most suppliers want their display units at the front of the shop. This time of the year it’s challenging so we look for alternatives. The location in the photo, at the end of our busiest magazine aisle, works for us. Currently we have the Pacific Magazines Christmas-themed floor display unit in this location.
The success of the Pacific Magazines unit placement is that it puts the unit under a spotlight. There is less visual competition and this means more people notice the unit and the products it is promoting.
We concentrate on the rear of the business as much as the front as this can drive a more valuable per-visit shop for us.
I love the Christmas-themed scissors we sourced for placement with Christmas wrap. They are an easy add-on purchase, delivering terrific extra margin dollars to a basket. Placement is everything for getting the additional purchase of these scissors though. They have to be with Christmas wrap and cards. We have them placed vertically on a clip-strip.
These scissors were sourced from Pilot.
We have the two current issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Who placed between our two major newspapers. The Nelson Mandela cover story in Who makes it ideal for impulse purchase placement. BHG always works well when placed with newspapers.
The best way newsagents can grow sales is to respond to cover opportunities, placing relevant titles in a second location where more people will see the cover and thereby have an opportunity to purchase on impulse.
Embracing this opportunity separates engaged newsagents from all other retailers.
I was in a newsagency last last week and they had their frankie magazine in the magazine department, the frankie diary with diaries and their frankie calendar with their calendars. I urge newsagents to put all frankie products together – you’re more likely to increase sales. In one of my newsagencies we sold a magazine, diary and calendar to a shopper who came in to purchase the magazine.
This is basic retail – place stock to sell in the most efficient way possible. Think like your customer.
The coffin arrived and is now in place as the centrepiece of our Halloween 2013 display. Sadly, like all Halloween centrepieces, it will probably sell early.
We’re making the most of the opportunity and showing others in the centre how to do Halloween – we;re expecting their displays this year to be like last, very vanilla (boring).
Sales continue to be excellent – up on 2012.
We have a spinner packed with Peppa Pig product on our lease line as I have noted here previously. On Saturday I saw the importance of this stand in attracting shoppers to the business who might otherwise not have shopped with us.
Standing outside the newsagency I watched as a young girl dragged mum, dad and an older sister to look at Peppa. She pointed to the sign on top of the spinner. She bought a Peppa and the older sister bought another plush item. The parents bought two greeting cards.
Sometimes we don’t need a big billboard display to attract shoppers. Sometimes, easy to see well-located placement of a recognisable brand can attract traffic that otherwise you may not have attracted.
Footnote: our discount vouchers helped us maximise the opportunity from this family. Total spend was in excess of $35. The team working in this newsagency created this success for us.
I was in a newsagency yesterday and saw terrific AFL Grand Final engagement. They had several displays in-store, covering two entrances, with different balloon displays available for purchase.
I like that they had these packages ready to go and that they had them placed near their AFL licenced greeting cards, plush and calendars. Excellent opportunistic retail activity.
We’re using products from three different suppliers to support this aisle-end display promoting official AFL products. It’s faces into the front of the store and capping our magazine department.
I love that the in-store team has grouped items from multiple suppliers to tell a story. I also love that they have done this in a small footprint. Indeed, this display would work in newsagencies of all sizes.
I’ve noticed AFL product displays in several supermarkets over the last week so I’m comfortable we’re in this space at this time of the year too.
The lowest margin items on the display are the calendars from Network and we only have these out of necessity. Thankfully we’re achieving a fairer margin with our cards from Hallmark and the plush items.
Here’s another example of how newsagents can grow sales by connecting products by shopper interest more so that product type. The teapot calendar sells well when placed with our range of teapots and teas. The same shopper will be interested in all three items yet in a more traditional newsagency the calendar would be in the calendar department and not placed with the teapots and teas.
We have added a small riser to the That’s Life Puzzler on the Go display unit so we could add a second title. Puzzler on the Go is working well in this second location with That’s Life so it’s natural we’d want to try the same for a second of the That’s Life puzzle titles.
Our crossword sales are up 5% year on year – showing we can grow magazine sales by managing the category.
I like the tactical placement by a team member at one of my stores of the new range of Magbooks with the VTAC Guide. These Magbook titles appeal to the people buying the VTAC Guide.
Thoughtful tactical placement like this can achieve incremental business in a newsagency, using a popular seasonal title to draw attention to other titles people have not come in to purchase.
On the VTAC Guides, one of my stores sold 350 as a bulk order for a local school – very nice business and an extension of traditional back to school business.
Our sales of That’s Life Puzzler On The Go are growing very well thanks to this placement with our weekly magazines, next to That’s Life itself. It’s terrific that a simple move taking a few seconds can generate good sales growth off already good base sales. I’d urge others to try this placement for themselves.
We’ve moved some confectionery from the counter and replaced it with a range of eco bags in cute owl bags. Owl products sell well for us. As the photo shows the placement has been done in a way to interrupt customers at the counter. We’ll maintain this counter placement for a couple of weeks and check sales data before deciding if we move them on. This is the second location in-store for these bags.
We have had this unit full of magazines placed on the lease line of the shop facing into the mall since last Thursday. It’s generated good sales – a good return on the space. We chose the titles deliberately, the selection is working.
We’ve seen shoppers purchasing magazines as they leave the business, shoppers who had made a purchase returning with a magazine from the stand – in some cases using the Discount Voucher they just received.
Iron Man is huge around the world following the release of the latest movie, Iron Man 3. The movie is breaking box office records and reinforcing interest in the brand. We are tapping into this with placement of the Iron Man related titles in prime position between entertainment and kids magazine titles.
I love the nail care gift with the latest issue of Take 5. It’s a perfect gift for the Take 5 shopper. We are using the counter unit in a placement above our weekly titles in a feature space we reserve for opportunities like this. We also have the magazine in another location as well as its usual location – it’s got three opportunities to be browsed and purchased.
We have the counter unit here and not at the counter as we no longer place magazines at the counter – that space is reserved for higher margin impulse purchase items.
Our placement two weeks ago of some health related magazines below weeklies has worked. Almost all titles benefited from a sales lift from this location – we pocket count copies.
Often, magazine shoppers only visit the part of the magazine department containing what they want. Our off-location placement brings the mountain to mohammed.
Not every range we place here works. Over time, we have found what works best for us and cycle through these categories every couple of weeks – keeping the up-sell promotion fresh.
I love the display and tactical placement promoting the launch issue of RB7 created by the team at one of my stores. With partworks this year accounting for more than 10% of magazine sales and attracting new traffic and with the grand prix in town it makes sense to jump on this opportunity.
This is a simple yet effective display in the right location to drive maximum commercial benefit for us. It helps that it has a local connection.
I deliberately placed this timber sign: Teaching – not in it for the income in it for the outcome – at the front of the placement of these signs because it’s how I feel about teachers and because for two years now the Liberal state government in Victoria has failed to deliver on their promise. Ted Baillieu said he’d make Victorian teachers the best paid in the country and for two years he has welched on that promise. So I was happy to use this sign as the lead in our refresh of this homewares range.
I like being able to place product to make a statement. But I also like selling products with an optimistic message as this whole homewares range has. The optimism in the text of the range gives the shop and optimistic feel.
I was in a department store recently and noticed these colourful shoelaces at the counter of the shirt department. The placement struck me as odd and then i realised it was genuis. Give the customers the unexpected and they will notice it more.
Many newsagencies offer the same at the counter, maybe so much so that it’s noticed that much. What if you tried something completely different, ridiculous even? maybe it would be notices and purchased. There is only one way to find out.
We often complain that customer are store blind in our shops – maybe we make them so by not being creative in our displays and placement.