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I have been fortunate to see some up to date sales data for greeting cards comparing the performance of newsagencies to department stores, supermarkets, card shops and discount retailers.  The newsagency channel has achieved more growth than the other greeting card channels.  We remain the number one consumer preferred destination for greeting cards with just above 35% market share.  While this has fallen over the last ten years, it has increased over the last two years.

It is important that we understand our positioning and respect our leadership in this category.  Too often we leave greeting card management to our suppliers.  By engaging more, we could grow sales and make greeting cards even more profitable for us.  Such engagement needs to go beyond looking at new ranges or having a coffee with a card rep.  We need to actively work on the in-store experience, staff training and external marketing to drive card sales to their full potential.

Female Hairy Crabs Require 24 Hour Notice.

I saw this note on a menu item in a restaurant in Hong Kong earlier this week. Yes, travel broadens the mind. I did not order the dish.

In 1988 the US TV Guide sold for US$3billion.  Last week it sold for US$1.00, yes, one dollar.  Village Voice has more on this story.

Speaking at the opening Digital Leadership Dialogue event at POLIS on Tuesday, Emily Bell predicted an apocalyptic period for mainstream traditional media.

Read the full report at journalism.co.uk.  Not a positive start to the week.

Change brings opportunities for all of us.  We have been working on plans for a shop-fit for our Frankston newsagency.  We are embracing change by developing a model which allows every fixture to be movable except for the counter.  Magazine fixtures, card fixtures and stationery fixtures will not be built in to outlast armageddon as is often the case.

While I am not expecting an apocalyptic period, significant change has been evident in the newsagency channnel since 1999. Disruption of mainstream media by technology and the current economic situation are to fans pushing change forward.  Hence the need for a flexible shop-fit.

UK retailer Sainsbury’s has launched a website, Ways to Save, which lists ways consumers can save, as their response to the credit crunch.

The folks at Good magazine and Starbucks have got together to provide a single sheet single topic sampler promoting Good to Starbucks customers. The single sheet sampler, called Good Sheet, will run for 11 weeks.

I like the idea of sampling magazines, especially monthlies. I’d certainly engage with any publisher wishing to test such an approach to building their reach.

In a story in The Age today, ANF acting CEO Don MacAskill is quoted as saying

“People have criticised our organisation for the due diligence that was conducted on Bill Express, but at the end of the day, to put this in perspective, Telstra did due diligence on Bill Express, Optus did due diligence … Vodafone did due diligence,” he said.

“Now if they all thought that they were a worthy credit risk, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the ANF wouldn’t have been too off the mark in thinking it was a worthwhile risk. They definitely had the resources to do a hell of a lot better due diligence.”

MacAskill, in a communication to ANF members, said the ANF had not seen the agreements newsagents signed with Bill Express and that there were various forms of these.

In other communication he has claimed that the ANF did conduct due diligence and that this was undertaken by ANF lawyers Fisher Jeffries.

I joined the ANF Board in December 2003 and resigned in December 2004. The Bill Express decision was made by the ANF Board at its February 26/27 2003 meeting. When I joined the Board, I was provided Board papers for the year prior. I cannot see any evidence of due diligence being conducted by the ANF on the commercial relationship proposed between newsagents and Bill Express and associated businesses. The only due diligence I can see relates to the heads of agreement between the ANF and Bill Express.

On May 30 this year I wrote to the Acting CEO of the ANF expressing concern at public statements made by the ANF about Bill Express and how they conflict with what I knew about ANF decisions and actions in relation to Bill Express. As I noted in that correspondence, newsagents need to know the truth no matter how unpleasant.

Associations, their Directors and employees ought to be prepared to throw themselves in front of a bus for their members. Members must come first. I hope that one day, in an appropriate forum, newsagents will be able to access sufficient facts to determine if their national association put the needs of newsagents first.

I was lucky to be in the invited audience for the first dress rehearsal for Wicked, the Broadway musical, Thursday night at Melbourne’s Regent theatre.  This was the first time Wicked was performed in front of an audience here in Australia.

Wicked is amazing, spectacular – performances, the set, effects and the story.  You are taken on a journey to into Oz, no mean feat in a 2,000 seat theatre.  The audience last Thursday gave the show a standing ovation!  I am sure it will have a long run here.

Victorian newsagents have an opportunity to get into the Wicked mood over the next two weeks as press coverage builds during the preview period to the gala opening night.  Today’s Herald Sun has a big behind the scenes spread.  The show is a big intrastate and interstate tourism draw.  Hence the opportunity to build some retail theatre around Wicked – for the sake of theatre itself.  If you’re a Tiketek outlet you have even more reason to get behind Wicked.

I have been in communication with a business in India and considering purchasing some products from them. It is interesting to experience different business customs in emails and on the phone. A good example of this is an email I received from this supplier yesterday. It was a reminder to consider their products. However, before they got down to business they had a Mother’s day message:

A man stopped at a flower shop to order some flowers, to be wired to his mother who lived 200 miles away. As he got out of his car, he noticed a young girl sitting on the curb sobbing. He asked her what was wrong and she replied , I wanted to buy a red rose for my mother. But I only have 75 cents and a rose costs 2 dollars. The man smiled and said, bœcome in with me, I’ll buy you a rose.

He bought the little girl her rose and ordered his own mother flowers. As they were leaving , he offered her ride home. She said, yes please, you can take me to my mother.” She directed him to a cemetery, where she placed the rose on a freshly dug grave.

The man returned to the flower shop, canceled the wire order, picked up a bouquet and drove the 200 miles to his mother’s house.

There is a sensitivity in how business is conducted in some countries which makes me pause some days. Sure, I’ve been sent similar emails to the one copied above, but not by someone I am discussing business with…

This is a post to update my Technorati Profile.

One of the most successful newspaper promotions I can recall is coming again. Monopoly starts in a few days in the Herald Sun. We are going to actively support the promotion and use the opportunity to leverage add-on sales around the promotion.

Suppliers to newsagents need to review how they interact with the channel. With some newsagents receiving upwards of twenty-five unsolicited sales visits in a week, the time being wasted being courteous in nuts. To find even five or ten minutes in a busy and long day is an unfair impost and often unnecessary.

Better more efficient communication is needed. The current freedom of access sucks too much time out of an already time poor channel.

More newsagents ought to put up a sign – no unsolicited rep calls accepted.

We are preparing to implement a makeover of this blog next week. We are aiming to make the blog more appealing to the eye and easier to navigate. There may be a few bumps as we transfer the 3,000 or so posts, comments and other details associated with the blog. We are also establishing an independent domain: www.newsagencyblog.com.au.

Today, we’re upgrading our blog software in advance of next week’s moves so please excuse any outage.

I apologise for this blog being off the air most of the weekend. We were attacked and our servers succumbed. We’re back now as you can see. I can publish posts and you can;t view them.

A TV sitcom pilot I have written, has been selected as a finalist by a TV network in a pitching competition at this year’s Screen Produces Association of Australia conference on the Gold Coast. While I am proud of the Break a Leg concept, characters and pilot script, the live pitch will take me completely outside my comfort zone. My writing background is one of leaving others to bring characters and their words to life on stage or film. The experience itself will be invaluable I am sure.

Subway has a brilliant promotion at the moment – buy four Subway Fresh Fit meals between now and early December and for $50 more plus $10 postage you get a Repco bike. Subway has established itself as the healthy fast food and this promotion reinforces that. A bike for $50 in excellent value.

This campaign keeps Subway playing in a different ocean to the traditional fast food outlets. This is what newsagents, or at least each of the marketing groups, need to do – stand for something which separates from the pack and gives consumers a reason for active support.

Smoking has not been a problem of us in over eleven years at Forest Hill. This week, with the new Target store oprning, we are fighting Target employees smoking right at the entrance to the mall near us and in the alcove at our back door.

We misplaced the box of Daffodil Day fund raising product at our newsagency and forgot about promoting the cause. With our back room in upheaval for months because of construction plus so many charity requests put on newsagents we could make excuses but we know that the fault was ours. A weakness in our process allowed the box to go missing for weeks – we found it on the weekend. We have sent a cheque off for all the Daffodil Day product and taken it as a lesson to improve the back room processes.

I’d like to see some structure brought to charities using newsagents as fund raising points. There are some weeks we are raising money for two charities. This is not ideal.

Give then noise about the paper mill planned to be built by Gunns in the Tamar Valley Tasmania, I was interested to read a report published in May by Access Economics on paper and the environment.

Commissioned by representatives of Double A paper, the study analysed the environmental impact of major paper manufacturers around the world. The report lauds Double A paper as being environmentally sound:

Considering a wide range of environmental issues relating to paper manufacturing, Access Economics estimates the environmental cost of Double A paper to be just over $16 per tonne (or 4 cents a ream). This compares with a cost of $80 per tonne for a leading brand of Australian copy paper (see table and chart below).

Double A’s environmental advantage lies in its pulp sourcing (from farmed eucalyptus trees grown by farmers along the edges of rice plantations) and its ability to be self-sufficient in energy via its carbon-neutral biomass-fuelled electricity generating plant. In addition, waste water is treated by ‘extended aeration activated sludge’ process and recycled to irrigate trees and to cool the power plant without discharging into public water sources. Moreover, high
rainfall in Thailand means that the opportunity cost of water used in the paper making process is relatively low. As such, Double A outperformed recycled paper from the United Kingdom, and its European and Finnish counterparts.

I’m please to read this because Double A is the premier brand of paper we stock in my newsagency.

While I am against the Gunns paper mill, this report from Access Economics brings the issue of paper back to consumer choice. What we feed into our printers every day is as important an environmental decision as whether the mill is built. It is why I will continue to support Double A paper.

On the way to Sydney today, a few feet from security, the shutters come down and the Qantas terminal is evacuated. Thousands of people were herded out of the terminal while it was made secure.

People were well behaved. the only incident was the escalator spewing people to the upper level which was full of people – causing a momentary crush.

After waiting a while we logged on and booked a Virgin Blue flight.

Ah, the joys of travel.

It fascinates me that UBD and Melways publish their new street directories at Father’s Day time each year. What does this say about the male refusal to ask directions? Hmmm.

While sales may guide the timing, I am certain some fathers would appreciate a less predictable gift. That aside, we have placed our UBD stack on the dance floor near the newspaper stand. Our Melways will be placed next to them when they arrive today. We know that if we do not move this stock in the next three weeks the next opportunity in Christmas.

The challenge, of course, is that every retailer under the sun will have the new editions of UBD and Melways. Newsasgents need to be corporate and bold in their approach to win the business.

We are giving away a BBQ to one lucky customer as part of our Hallmark Father’s Day promotion. What the photo of our windows does not show is the effect of the faux flames the have created on the BBQ. It’s drawing people into check out the great range of cards and to drive sales – even at this early stage in the season. The photo below does not do the display justice – phorographing through galss never does. See the fan in the forner – it is fanning the ‘flames’.

Father’s Day is known as one of the softest card seasons. Our goal with the BBQ giveaway, brighter product displays and other in store displays is to build the season and reinforce our newsagency as a go to card destination in the area.

Parts of two carparks feeding customers to our end of the centre are blocked off this morning for filming of the Neighbours TV show. We see cast members in our shop regularly as the studio is a few streets away.

Western Union has reported an increase in revenue of 8% to US$1.2 billion. Their margin fell from 29% to 27%. I guess this is reflected in lower commissions on transfers – we certainly see that at the store level. It is interesting to see the announcement lists Australia Post (among others) as a key agent renewing its agreement with Western Union.