The distribution newsagent did not provide the royal wedding insert for the Herald Sun yesterday. Time was wasted chasing. Customers were frustrated, and bought their Herald Sun from supermarkets in the same centre. They don’t have their newspaper supply meddled with by a petty minded distribution newsagent.
It is experiences like this that move one closer to quitting papers from the business.
Magazine distributor, Gordon and Gotch this product these to newsagents this week with magazines. I highlighted magazine distributor because they should get that right first.
I, like plenty of newsagents, already had the product, sourced direct.
From Gotch I’d make 25% whereas from the direct supplier my GP is twice that.
What a frustrating situation!
So, I am returning the stock to Gotch. Here is the unopened box. Dead stock.
A waste of money for me and for the supplier who paid to get it delivered to me any many others.
Dumb.
However, I should not have to return it. Gotch should not have sent the stock. It is not magazine related. The margin is appalling, offensive even. Their arrogance is sending it lands my business with a returns cost that is unfair. They decided to risk this new products, a product from a category unrelated to their core. The problem is theirs, not mine.
It is situations like this that get newsagents closer to thinking why bother with magazines?
Lotterywest has released new Lotto Terminals that print Price Embedded Barcodes (PEB), like Tatts.
These barcodes do not meet GS1 Price Embedded Barcode Standards. This means they will not scan like the Tatts Lotto Tickets and put in the price automatically. This only effects West Australian sites who have these new terminals and want to scan their lotto tickets.
Experts at my newsagency software company have looked at the barcodes on the Lotterywest tickets and confirm they do not meet GS1 Price Embedded Barcode Standards. Tower has sent information on Price Embedded Barcodes to Lottertwest many times.
The actual problem is the prefix of the barcodes. “51” is not a standard prefix for a PEB hence they don’t scan as a PEB but rather as a product.
Hey Lotterywest – this is not rocket science. Your organisation requires retailers to follow standards. You should do this yourselves.
Earlier this month, Gordon and Gotch launched The Market Hub, a wholesale business offering toys, gifts and other items.
In my opinion, Gotch should get its magazine distribution business right first. There are too many mistakes, too much oversupply, poor newsagent customer service and a poor tech platform through which newsagents connect.
As I have noted previously, Gotch could grow magazine sales for publishers by providing better service to newsagents, through a better tech platform. Indeed, the poor Gotch tech interface is a big barrier to newsagents taking on new titles.
There are items offers by Gotch through The Market Hub with a suggested retail price that is higher than the original supplier suggested retail. This potentially sets the participating newsagents as expensive and creates a false margin perception in my opinion.
Some items in the Gotch offer need understanding and support to drive sales success. Simply purchasing product and stocking it is not enough for such items.
FAILURE TO ADHERE TO DATA STANDARDS.
It is in the data side where I have concerns with how Gotch has gone about the launch of The Market Hub. Gotch sent to newsagents an EDI file using a format designed for magazine data. XchangeIT passed through the file, without testing.
The file contained errors. Gotch and XchangeIT people were clueless and, in my opinion, disengaged. It fell to the COO of my newsagency software company to detail the errors in the Gotch file sent by XchangeIT.
A big challenge was that Gotch was the supplier. The way the standard plays out is that having one company provide data for two very different types of products through one file format is problematic. yet, for several days, Gotch and XchangeIT resisted establishing a second supplier for Gotch to send through their data for The Market Hub.
While I don’t know about other software companies, XchangeIT agitated my newsagency software company, Tower Systems, to change its software to serve the approach Gotch and XchangeIT wanted to take. What this meant is they wanted me to personally fund, to the tune of many thousands of dollars, changes so they could bend XchangeIT data to work with standards not designed to accomodate the data they wanted to send.
I made it clear to them that out of all of us at the table, Gotch, XchangeIT and Tower, only I was being asked to personally fund any work. I refused. Instead, Tower outlined an approach they could take with no cost – by sending the data from a separate supplier.
Thankfully, it appears that The Market Hub from Gotch will be established as a separate supplier through XchangeIT, negating the need for any software changes. Why is this relevant? In my opinion it reflects the poor preparation by Gotch and XchangeIT for this project and an arrogance that they expect others to invest capital on their behalf. But they are from the magazine distribution side of the business so I guess that is their usual approach.
What should Gotch and XchangeIT have done differently? They should have engaged the software companies before sending the file. They should have followed the standards. The should have established a separate supplier for this new Gotch business. They should have thoroughly tested the data they sent.
Instead, they worked in secret and rush to newsagents flawed data, compromising the integrity of the data standards that XchangeIT ferociously protects when it comes newsagent data. It is a pity they are not as tough with themselves and Gotch as they are with newsagents.
Gotch, not content with its broken magazine distribution business, has branched out into supplying gift related product to newsagents. Some of the products have suggested retail prices that are higher than supplier suggested retail, giving an inaccurate impression of margin.
XchangeIT has sent out a invoice file from Gotch for this new gift product venture that is riddled with errors. The experts at XchangeIT were clueless about the file they sent. They had not checked it.
An expert at my newsagency software company checked the file and listed for XchangeIT the problems in the data from Gotch that they sent through their facility. This was done because XchangeIT people were too lazy to do they work they should have done.
XchangeIT take a big stick to newsagents on compliance yet appear to accept no responsibility for their own lack of compliance.
XchangeIT has one job. They failed.
Gotch should have one job – distributing magazines based on what will certainly sell. They fail weekly.
People in both companies will be angry that I am writing this, they will have their excuses. In my opinion, the excuses will be baseless.
If Gotch has the time and money for a new venture they have the time and money to stop gross oversupply and to stop the distribution errors that cost newsagents a ton of money.
If XchangeIT can send out a data file riddled with errors and that they have not tested they have no right penalising newsagents on their compliance.
A colleague newsagent from Ireland emailed me yesterday about a significant change in trading terms by their managing and newspaper wholesaler. Here is their story, which I have edited slightly to remove identifying information:
I am the guy who gets up early in the morning, every morning, to haul the bundles of magazines and papers into my store where I carefully and proudly display title after title, many full facing to entice the reader, your customer…to buy. I am the store they love to go to, to browse the hundreds of titles on display.
My store and many more like mine is where your products reach their buyer.
Menzies Distribute your product in Ireland and recently bought out Easons from the EM News Distribution in Ireland. It would seem that they are deploying new tactics too.
We have been newsagents for decades. We have always paid our suppliers on time and the same applies to Menzies. For the record we do not owe any outstanding invoices over 30 days to Menzies.
However I recently received an email from Joanna Nizynska, who represent the accounts department in Menzies in Edinburgh, informing me that our payment terms are now changed to the following:
“all invoices within a calendar month due on the 1st of the next month.” So we are invoiced every Saturday for the current week and all invoices then in August, must be paid on September 1st.
This is effectively a reducing credit term with the last invoice of the month possibly having only days credit?
Without access to the standard terms of 30 days credit most retailers would close.
I am asking for your help where possible to make representation on this issue.
It has been implied by Menzies representatives that If i don’t meet these new demands that i may suffer disruption to the supply of papers and magazines to my store. In other words they suspend or close my account. Bullying me into accepting new terms and conditions or face no supply as they have a monopoly in Ireland.
Is this how we want the industry to go, is this what you the publishers want? is this what you the trade representatives want? We all know the stats in terms of print media but a bigger issue in my opinion and a factor in the whole story is how Newsagents all over the World are being treated by the industry.
Encourage us instead of badgering us, incentivize us instead of penalizing us, help us to help you grow!
Is this the end of the road for Newsagents in Ireland?
How would Australian newsagents feel if any of their suppliers introduced such a change to trading terms?
My opinion is this move by Menzies in the UK is bad. I agree with the newsagent who originally wrote about it. Eliminating usual business trading terms will hurt small business retailers for sure.
If costs have increased, suppliers need to have their customers, the magazine publishers, pay. It is unreasonable to force small business owners, those located at the bottom of the food chain, to pay.
We see this in Australia with uneconomic terms of magazines causing newsagents to react by reducing their space commitment to the category.
At some point publishers and distributors will wonder what happened. Them being disrespectful of small business retailers is what happened. That is what I think is happening here in this story from the UK.
There is no missing the subscription offer sticking out from the current issue of Belle magazine on newsagency shelves. In fact, it sticks out so much that it covers most of the magazine in the pocket located behind it – making this pitch not only disrespectful of newsagents but disrespectful of other magazine publishers. Shame on whoever is responsible.
Newsagents make 25% off each magazine sold. This bold subscription is offensive as it is the publisher using our real estate to convert shoppers from in-store purchase to subscription.
I get that subscriptions are part of the mix. This is different given how it is being promoted. It is stealing our retail space and maybe hurting sales of other titles along the way.
It sucks.
The most basic task magazine distributor Gordon and Gotch has serving newsagents and publishers is to accurately and ethically supply magazines based on sales data. I regularly receive evidence from newsagents of the company’s people or systems or both failing to do this.
The image shows the worsening situation regarding People’s Friend for one newsagency.
The graduation of supply suggests that the problem here is systemic rather than human error.
It looks to me like Gotch has stock it has to move, regardless of sales. I would love to be wrong but the evidence suggests I am not. There is no reason for the ramping up of supply as Gotch has done.
This action disadvantages newsagents. It makes them less competitive. It is unfair. Yet here we are in July 2017 with a post about an issue that I was writing about here back in 2005 when I started this blog.
Magazine publishers, we need your help.
It is action like this that causes newsagents to cut space for magazines, thereby forcing Gotch to cut the range of titles carried. I have written about newsagents doing this, and why, yet no one appears interested enough to fix the most fundamental problem: the continuing systematic oversupply by Gotch.
What happens here is that each oversupply has a cost to newsagents of labour, space and freight. All of these costs are borne from an acton over which the newsagent has absolutely no control.
There are not many businesses where poor (or deliberately harmful) supplier practices lead to significant loss making activity for the recipient business.
The newsagent who sent me this screen shot has good data, reliable data, provided on time. The actions of Gotch have nothing to do with recent returns notification changes. No, the actions here go to the core of magazine distribution, they reflect decades-long problems that are a blight on the newsagency channel, but not supermarkets it would appear.
That magazine publishers remain silent on this issue is appalling as their interests and newsagent interests are aligned. Only over the counter sales matter. Everything else is overhead to be kept as low as possible.
Here are three photos from the outside of a newsagency I saw on the weekend. Magazine returns for $2.00. Old-school magazine stickers that make newsagents look bad. A NRL poster from 2014. Shocking.
What surprises me is the business has Tatts and it looks as bad as these photos. How the Tatts reps could allow the business to trade, as they have done for years, while the busily breach professional looking businesses for minor infractions is a joke.
This newsagency is an embarrassment to any retail business that trades under the Newsagency shingle. It would be good for there to be a way to stop them using the shingle.
I was sucked in by the 9 Network marketing for A Current Affair last night. The promotional script sounded bad for newsagents and bad for scratchies. The story itself was a dud, a waste of time. The “shock” of the show was that spending $2,000 on scratchies produced around $700 in prizes.
The odds for scratch ticket games are readily available. They are produced and sold as a commercial enterprise and overseen by government. There is nothing to see here except for poor journalism.
Next time the folks at Fairfax demand you putt out newspaper posters to promote their news papers show them this photo from Monday at a Coles supermarket for it shows how much Fairfax finks news sells The Age in Melbourne.
Oh, and remind them Coles supermarkets are not required to display newspaper posters.
News Corp. sent out a notice to selected newsagents Monday about a promotion designed to sell more newspapers. They appear to be working this promotion through Blueshyft, a company that, in my opinion, is useless when it comes to efficient use and management of newsagent technology. Blueshyft launched Ladbroks into the newsagency channel.
I contacted News Corp.. As you might expect, no answer from them about this.
There is no point contacting Blueshyft as past experience achieved nothing. In the meantime, newsagents are left to consider a campaign that could be been run so much better.
Footnote: if you think this is about my software company, it is not. It is about a publisher engaging people who understand little about smart ways to use technology from various companies in newsagencies to drive outcomes beneficial to newsagents and newspaper publishers.
UPDATE: I found out today that the genius approach from Blueshyft requires newsagents to perform two transactions for this News Corp promotion – on the Blueshyft terminal and on their newsagency software. Yes, truly nuts!!!
Click here to see the announcement to newsagents about Fairfax Easter bundles. It is a pity that Fairfax does not take software companies up on the offer to create advice in advance of Fairfax advising newsagents. The Fairfax approach creates more work for everyone. Clearly, they care less about getting the right advice to newsagents so they can save time and get it right the first time.
Queensland newsagents are disappointed with the latest promotion launched by Tatts and News.
The information put to me is this really is a Tatts driven promotion with News doing what it is told.
My concern is that entry is via online. That’s is where Tatts is focussed.
If I was a retailer I wold refuse this promotion until Tatts actively supported me as a retailer against the continues attached by Lottoland.
Here is the pitch:
News Corp + Crosswords Promotion
From 5 March to 1 April we are partnering with News Corp to give away a $20,000 holiday voucher and 4 weekly $5,000 holiday vouchers.
Customers must purchase any Crosswords ticket and an eligible News Corp Newspaper to receive a promotional Scratch Card. The Scratch Card directs customers to holidaygiveaway.thelott.com to enter their details into the draw.
Eligible Newspapers:
The Courier-Mail
The Sunday Mail
The Cairns Post
The Townsville Bulletin
The Gold Coast Bulletin
Every so often someone cuts the balloon ‘penis’ off this card. We don’t check the security system as life is too short to worry about the petty criminal actions of the censor. But it bothers me someone would enter the shop and censor what we sell. They can behave how they like in their own homes but in my shop they should respect my property.
If I did catch them I’d report them to the police as this damaging of property is wilful, malicious. If they don;t like what we stock they don’t have to come into the shop.
Ugh.
At a coffee shop in Hobart earlier this week I heard a tourist say to a companion the paper here is $3.50, they’d never get away with that back home. They were pointing at The Mercury on a stand. I can see how they would think that.
We see this in retail, shoppers misunderstanding a sign or price. It is on us in retail to create better signs just as it is on the folks at The Mercury to be clear that the paper is $1.40.
I noticed this out of date newspaper fixture in a convenience store in Sydney earlier this week. I mentioned to the guy behind the counter about the out of date promotion information from April this year. Not my problem he said. The newspaper company has to change it. This is a competition of the newsagency channel. I really wonder why publishers like convenience stores. They care less about their product.
