On the retail tour in the US these last twelve days I have seen several versions of retailers selling magazine sin-store. This is the best and most tech connected – a tablet computer promoting subs in the magazine department and shoppers being encouraged to sign up on the spot. Now, this was in a transit location as were all I have seen. No high street magazine retailer was making a subscription pitch that I could see.
It is frustrating that Fairfax and News often work against each other in their support of newsagents with collateral and fixtures. Where both company have local capital city dailies they target different shoppers – so there is no reason to block working together.
I’d like to see both publishers invest in a small footprint movable acrylic stand that we could use to place newspapers in different locations. This week it could be at the front of the newsagency and next week adjacent to the counter.
A stand holding the dailies and room for high volume foreign language titles would help newsagents promote newspapers. It could also provide n alternative to retail only newsagents placing newspapers at the back of the shop as is being done more today.
I say to publishers – get over competing with each other and compete for eyeball attention by investing in something that helps you, newsagents and your advertisers.
taste is being advertised extensively on TV at the moment, making it a good magazine title to have in front of people who may not visit looking for it. We are promoting taste in food with a double pocket placement and a second location (varies between weeklies, newspapers and the counter) as a result of noticing the TV coverage.
It’s been good to see the ANF listed as one of the industry associations supporting the Australian Retailers Association campaign against the fuel discount programs of the Coles and Woolworths supermarket duopoly. It’s good they are holding the new federal government to account for their election promise about the supermarkets.
I love the free chocolate issue of delicious magazine … because our customers love it. Even though I think it’s a mistake to seal a food title in plastic, the free block of Lindt chocolate seems to do the trick. As usual, we have been supporting this issue in a good location to make the most of the opportunity.
On gifts with magazines, I’d put this in my top ten. I do love chocolate so I have a conflict in judging that list.
All of this will show the landlord that you are a proactive retailer, someone working hard to attract shoppers to their property.
Who out tomorrow has exclusive photos of the Justin Timberlake Jessica Biel wedding. It’s an opportunity to give the magazine special treatment, to leverage its point of difference.
We are planning promotion at the counter for impulse purchases as well as additional facings with the weekly magazines.
Pink is on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine and her fans are on social media and raving about the cover photo and the magazine. This will be a collectors item for Pink fans. Newsagents should do something extra with this issue as you are likely to be able to grab incremental business if you get the cover in front of more people. Who doesn’t want more sales?
I am here in Denver for the Shop.org Annual Summit. The first two days have been excellent and the last looks just as good. While this is essentially a conference about retail and technology – mobile, social, Internet – it is, at its heart, a conference about retail today and into the future.
It has been interesting listening to speakers talk about the challenge of online retailers and the threat many think they pose to high street retail and how high street is in the better position because of a range of undeniable economic factors (which I won’t go into here) yet high street retailers worry to the point of harming their own businesses. This thread is particularly interesting given the challenges newsagents face: disruption around plenty of what we sell, fundamental restructuring of key parts of our businesses and inability to leverage our biggest asset.
This conference reinforces for me the extent of change taking place in and around retail and the need for everyone involved in retail to have a plan for embracing navigating and change. Change goes beyond what we know today. Just one stat which is mind-boggling: 10% of sales achieved by UK retailer Marks & Spencer are done online. This is a business that was technologically in the dark ages just a few years ago. M&S are entering new countries without opening stores. Nordstrom, a US department store with US$10B+ in sales and more than 200 stores is achieving excellent online growth.
While the stories gaining the most attention are from large retailers, my core interest is small and independent retailers. I attend these conferences to learn about opportunities for this sector – to help us compete in the changing world. As with so many things in business it comes back to customer service … but that’s a post for another day.
We have been supporting the latest issue of Australian Traveller magazine and a selection of camper and 4WD titles with this display in a pillar facing shoppers as they enter the store.
The idea here is to bring a category out from the usual location to the rear of the newsagency and show shoppers who shop the front of the business to see them. I chose Australia Traveller as the headline title because of the cut through of the collateral and that the proposition of the title is easy to get by a browser.
Regulars here will notice that we have done several of these category specific off-location displays. They are working, achieving additional sales for us. Magazine sales are up 12% comparing the last four weeks to the same four weeks a year earlier. I think this is in part due to this off-location support.
Click on the image to see a bigger version.
We are promoting the latest issue of Men’s Health magazine with this column-based display facing shoppers as they leave our men’s magazine aisle and our newspaper location.
While we have the title well represented with sports and fitness titles, we wanted to get it into the front half of the newsagency to grab impulse purchases fro the front action of the shop and leave.
A couple of media outlets yesterday reported on the PMP (parent company of magazine distributor Gordon and Gotch) takeover offer. The reports offered on a little more than we know already. here is the key additional information from Business Spectator:
PMP still hasn’t told us who is responsible for the $253 million takeover proposal that it informed us about almost two weeks ago. The Australian Financial Review believes that it’s a Brisbane-based, family-owned company that’s behind the conditional, non-binding proposal, which is being backed by US private equity.
On Gotch, it seems the company is looking at its operations and processes following recent staff losses. Hopefully this leads to a more equitable magazine distribution model for newsagents.
For all their talk about supporting Australia and Aussie farmers Coles has shown their true colours by importing British comedienne Dawn French to front their FlyBys advertising campaign.
There are plenty of Australian personalities who could have fronted this campaign. Every time I see a TV or print ad I find myself thinking about the Coles decision against Australia rather than what is being advertised.
I am left wondering whether it is cultural cringe on the part of Coles or ignorance about the need for a whole of business approach to supporting Australia.
We already lose too much of the entertainment dollar spent here in Australia on overseas acts. The money paid to French would do more for our country if it was paid to a local.
Maybe I am being petty but this campaign is impacting my supermarket shopping decisions even if it takes me a bit out of the way.
How is this relevant to newsagents? We are local businesses employing local people and investing in our local communities. We need to remind our local community of this through our words and actions at every opportunity. We need to show that we can act far more responsibly to our country than Coles has done.
Trucking company 1st Feet went into administration today. This will cause some pain in the magazine distribution world. Twitter is the best place for up to date news. 1,000 jobs at risk. There are consequences to cutting costs, especially in the logistics space.
There is no news yet on the implications for magazine distribution.
Following newsagent feedback here the publishers of Australian Traveller magazine have adjusted their production of the magazine to the start of the month rather than the end of the month. This is a terrific move and one newsagents should applaud as it is proof of their opinions being listened to.
The next issue goes on sale on April 4. It’s their popular “100” issue. This time it’s 100 best views in Australia. Based on past “100” issues, it will sell very well. The publisher has increased supply so newsagents can leverage what is usually sell out success. They are supporting the special issue with TV as well as PR and in-store marketing collateral.
I’d urge newsagents now to make a note to NOT early return this title. Make the most of the opportunity of what is usually a sell out.
We will co-locate this title with a feature with travel titles and a feature with women’s weeklies titles. Women make most travel decisions and we know from our own sales history that Australian Traveller sells well with the weeklies.
I was interested to see the Australia Post announcement of a new digital mailbox service a couple of days ago. It’s a fascinating offer, putting into one digital storage place a range of items. So it’s more of a storage space than a mail box as such.
The Australia Post announcement comes a couple of weeks after the launch of a privately owned service: Digital Post Australia, a joint venture between Computershare, Salmat and Zumbox.
Given the digital services available I am not sure why a government owned and protected business is getting into this space. But then Australia Post has never been one for living with the rules or doing what one expects.
I will be interested to see if this push online and the announcement of the creation of superstores by Australia Post impacts on the goodwill value of LPO businesses.
From a purely commercial perspective, small businesses should be unified in lobbying all politicians for Australia Post to follow the same competition requirements of all businesses, including the removal of their government protected monopoly which gives then an unfair advantage over the private, and often small, businesses with which they compete.
We have lifted this three-pocket display of kitchen and bathroom magazines to easy to see, browse and shop eye level in our home and living magazine section.
I have no doubt we will see a sales increase as a result. Indeed, I expect people will purchase two titles given the placement – i.e. they don’t have to hunt for them.
Regulars here would know that we often feature kitchen and bathroom titles in good locations and report a sales lift as a result. I mention it today as we have just received these three titles in and they go well together.
While there have been many insightful and commercially valuable takeaways from at tenting the National Retail Federation Conference and Expo in New York this week the one negative is that on the massive (three huge halls) Expo floor most companies don’t care about small business.
I had registered as a retailer and this was reflected on my name badge. Unless I had a national network of hundreds of stores I was not that interesting to them yet more than 90% of the membership of the NRF is small business. Odd that.
If I switched and talked with my newsagency software company hat on then they were interested and keen to see how their piece of the IT pie could fit with what we do.
It has been a fascinating three day conference and a valuable five days in New York. I have made some good business connections on the IT as well as newsagency fronts despite my frustrations with the trade show. Outside of the conference I have got to see some pretty cool retail innovation and engage in a couple of worthwhile business meetings with companies here.
Over the next few days I will think about the best way to share some of the key insights. My newsagency software company is hosting a national user meeting tour starting in ten days so that might be a starting point. There are takeaways from the conference and the broader New York and Las Vegas retail experience which I think can inform newsagent decisions about the future.
QR codes are everywhere in New York: on posters, products and advertisements. Plus in newspapers. The photo shows the use of QR codes by USA Today to add value to the reader experience. Not only do they have QR codes for each section of the newspaper, when they have additional content for a story you can link to this via the QR code. Clever.
For those not sure what a QR code is, click here for the Wikipedia entry.
We saw a burst of QR code activity in Australia and since then use of the technology has faded … not sure why.
