While a tiny category, trading cards are a great habit based product for newsagency who play in the space. In my store our trading card range brings regulars back. We know from sales data that they produce efficient, deeper basket, sales. That we have the product on consignment is even better from a cash flow perspective.
Habit based product is important to newsagents as we deal with the challenges of falling newspaper and flat magazine sales.
Tower Systems is hosting a free footy tipping competition again this year and you’re welcome to join in. To join the NRL competition click here. To join the AFL competition click here. First prize is $300, second prize is $150 and third prize is $50. Results are accessible weekly so a boost to your pride is the real reward.
Gavin Williams, the exalted Grand Poobah of the Tower Systems Footy Competition Committee has decreed the following rules:
1. Tips must be in by 5:30pm EST on the evening before the first game of the round, either Friday’s or Thursday’s. (No late tips will be accepted this year, no exceptions)
2. Failure to enter you tips will see you get the lowest score of the round minus 1 tip. (So if the lowest score tipped for the round was a 0 you will receive a score of -1 for the round)
3. You must be a Newsagent, work at a newsagency, or be a friend of Tower to be eligible to register.
4. All eligible users must register before the start of the season (the first game is on Friday 30th March).
5. Have fun.
We now know that the people behind the denial of service attack against this blog earlier today are also behind a denial of service attack against our Find It free online classifieds website today. Find It is hosted on a different server in a different state. That the same party is attacking two seeming externally unrelated but under common ownership sites is evidence that the attacked are targeted against us specifically and not the result of random internet crime.
UPDATE: (14:24) We have reported the matter to the Australian Federal Police and to the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. We have also been in contact with the Panama based company which issues the IP address to someone claiming to be in St Petersberg Russia from where the attack aparently came.
Our blog has been down for seven hours today as a result of a sustained denial of service attack. This malicious attack took down all websites on the server on which we are hosted. The attacks were in the form of thousands of accesses per minute against the comment script for the blog. Until we resolve this we have disabled comments. I apologise for this and hope to have comments live again within the next week.
The attack was apparently out of Russia. However, it is possible to ‘spoof’ the IP address to hide where the real attck is from.
Peter Dunn, a newsagent from Tamworth, blogs at Newsagency News. It’s a good, grass roots read, about newsagency life in rural Australia. We need more blogs like this.
Project freesheet is an excellent website documenting the impact of free newspapers on the environment. Their goal is to collect and publish 1.5 million images of the impact of free. They chose 1.5 million because that’s the number of free newspapers given away each day around London.
News Ltd announced yesterday the launch of MX, their free daily, into the Brisbane market following success in Sydney and Melbourne.
The deal I mentioned here last month between Australia Post and Smiggle social stationery seems to have blocked independent retailers like newsagents getting Smiggle product into their stores. Two newsagents I know of who were on the road to stocking Smiggle have reportedly been told by the company that Smiggle will not proceed because of “a corporate deal”.
I am sure I am not the only blogger pressured to censor or remove or edit blog entries. If the blog entry is inaccurate or the situation has changed, I’ll update it. Otherwise, it remains published. One of the benefits of blogging is that there is less filtering – stories are able to gain readership which in the old media world would never have seen the light of day. Companies need to understand that you can’t rewrite history by removing a blog entry.
I’m going to have to rethink long tail, niche, magazines as a result of this blog post by chocolatetrudi. It seems that Trudi was in my shop browsing and found some titles covering her special area of interest – knitting – and found a magazine she had been chasing for some time.
We pride ourselves on our niche title range and while it does not generate the return on space we would like, feedback like that from Trudi is encouraging.
We’re planning some changes to capture more of this market without the retail costs – more on that another time.
Over of the side ==> we’ve added a syndication box providing access from here to Find It online classified ads. From the Find It site itself we’ve made syndication very easy. It’s the same for finding newsagents – allowing access from any site which wants to trawl our database.
I am ashamed that my country is prepared to sit on its hands as the justice we claim to crave and fight for is trampled and human rights are ignored.
I don’t know what David Hicks did, if anything. I do know that he has been held prisoner and denied justice for more than five years. I also know that our Federal Government has seemed disinterested in pursuing justice for one of its citizens. The government’s inaction and ignorance on David Hicks’ situation appalls me.
We know from the prosecution that Hicks never shot or threatened anyone yet we there cases in Australia where someone is convicted of far worse and released from jail after two or three years. Our politicians have become paralysed by American insecurities. We have been caught in the web of fear which has, of itself, made America weaker.
It is time for Australia to stand up for itself and for one of its own.
I hope that this blog entry in some small way adds to the voice online about the injustice meted out against David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay every day. It joins 680,000 Google references to David Hicks.
Bring him home.
Resources:
Wikipedia
Fair Go For David
The President Versus David Hicks
David Hicks campaign site
Latest coverage from The Age newspaper
Michelle Grattan commentary
This is the window display at my local chocolate shop. It’s inspirational – the photo does not do it justice.
Newsagencies take on a new excitement over the next two weeks as love comes to town. Many do amazing displays like this chocolate shop in Brighton and sell plenty of cards, plush, chocolates and other gifts. Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to relax and enjoy retailing.
Naming a business is often a challenge and the easy solution it to make up words as the owners of Bookazine have done here in Hong Kong.
Newsagency like stores are not common over here except in the major western type shopping malls so Bookazine was a surprise find.
I like the way they pitch their core categories without letting one dominate and without letting a single supplier dominate. How many newsagencies can you think of where the lottery or major newspaper brand dominate the shingle?
Foreign Policy has a fascinating article by Rik Kirkland about Rupert Murdoch and the place of News Corp. in today’s rapidly changing media landscape. Newsagents will find Think Again: Rupert Murdoch worth reading.
Wired magazine’s Wild predictions for 2007 include:
A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.
It’s sure a wild prediction and I doubt it will come true in 2007. That it’s on the list encourages discussion. Newspaper sales demand that newsagents at least discuss predictions such as this.
The Federal Minister for Small Business, Fran Bailey, has responded to my November 16 letter about Australia Post. However, calling the Minister’s letter a response is inaccurate. One of her assistants has selected an off the shelf letter which is vaguely related and sent this to me.
My letter is specifically about the 865 Government owned Post Shop outlets and that many of the products they sell are not permitted under the Act under which Australia Post operates.
Rather than deal with my letter, the Minister reminds me that 3,611 Australia Post outlets are privately owned. My letter lists non postal items being sold by the Government business in competition with businesses like mine. The Minister writes about courier and related postal services. My letter raises the issue of Australia Post using its monopoly brand to land people in its stores for far less than I or any commercial business can. The Minister is silent on this.
The response by the Minister is grossly inadequate. It is a non response. If this were a High School assignment in business letter writing I would fail the student as they have not demonstrated any understanding of the original letter. From this letter I receive no confirmation that Minister Bailey actually read my letter nor that the Government understands the nature of my complaint.
The vague nature of the letter allows for the Minister an AWB type defence: she can claim she did not read my letter; that the response was prepared by an adviser; that her letter was factual.
There is a disconnect here Ms Bailey. I am a taxpayer bringing to you a serious problem caused by a Government owned enterprise, a problem which is costing jobs in small businesses like my newsagency. My take-away from your letter is that you care more about Australia Post than my small business. Your vague disconnected response is the latest in a stream of communication from this Government .
I urge the Government to amend the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989 to limit what Australia Post can sell through its own retail outlets and to names postal items such as envelopes and Post branded packaging materials. Such would be the action of a Government committed to small business.
Last night’s OzLotto prize was a $13 million jackpot and such a jackpot usually means a sales kick of between 10% and 20%. Yesterday, I drove past many newsagent Tattersalls outlets which were closed. While this was good for outlets like mine in shopping centres, it sends the wrong message to Tattersalls. Newsagents, in lotteries, have a great traffic generator. We know from press reports last week that there is talk of supermarkets getting in on the action more. We cannot afford to demonstrate poor service. Those stores closed yesterday sent the wrong message to Tattersalls and to Government, they gave them a reason to think we’re not serious about gambling product. Hard as it is to open Boxing Day, the $13 million jackpot should have seen every store open and actively promoting the dream.
If we lose some or all of the gambling product we have today, in part we will have ourselves to blame.
Thanks to others being closed and o our marketing our Tattersalls sales were up 200%. While that makes me happy, that many in the network were closed is a huge disappointment.
Here’s a Christmas photo I took of the team at newsXpress Forest Hill this morning. I hope their smiling faces bring Christmas cheer to all who visit here.
Left to right back to front: Shaun, Luke, Jane, Steven, Laura, Lauren and Ben (the boss)
We’re having a good Christmas season. Cards, wrap, confectionery, calendars and even magazines are all up.
Advertising people at The Age continue to treat the masthead as if it’s a web page with pop-up like post-it ads. Customers hate these. Editors and designers who put their heart into creating the front page must hate them too. What does it say about the publisher’s view of their product that it is desecrated like happened on Tuesday this week (above).
While the advertising folks at the Financial Review don’t get to cover the masthead, they do get to cover front page stories as this photo from Tuesday’s AFR shows.
These post-it ads must be worth it otherwise Fairfax would not un them. I wonder if their increased use reflect lesser respect within Fairfax for their printed product. Would the editors and publishers of, say, twenty or ten years ago have agreed to these ads? I suspect not.
Am I alone in thinking this?
Orange provided the WiFi coverage at the LeWeb conference and turned what should have been a triumph into a mess. With more than 600 of the participants fighting for bandwidth, the network infrastructure was always going to be challenged. Based on the frustration expressed by some, I bet the folks at Orange wish they’d never agreed to provide WiFi coverage to LeWeb. Still, it’s better than WiFi access I see back in Australia. I’ve trued the Telstra PCMCIA card and gave up on that. Then I switched to the Optus PCMCIA card and it’s no better. In a world where we’re more and more needing to be always on wireless access has to be addressed – it’s a business requirement if Australian businesses are to remain competitive.
Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative candidate for the presidency and Minister for the Interior addressed LeWeb this afternoon. While I’m not sure about his politics, his comments about the Internet and the need for France, and any country for that matter, to foster online innovation made sense. He called for easier access, better tools, better education and government support for R&D.
What was important about Sarkozy and other politicians coming the LeWeb today is their understanding of the importance of the blogosphere and the risk to countries which do not innovate.
Back in Australia I am reminded of the debate about who pays for faster broadband and the lack of government support for web 2.0 and related start ups. All Australian Governments ought to be eliminating barriers to online access, they ought to be aggressively funding startup Web 2.0 innovators and they ought to foster a culture of genuine intellectual property development. This is the next natural resource and our Governments, State and federal, seem to engage in all buy lip service.
IP in Web 2.0 and beyond businesses could be our next export and we’re not even having a national public conversation about it. Not seriously. In Australia we need faster, better and cheaper access. We need to foster innovation. We need better tax breaks for this innovation. And, we need politicians who understand the flat earth, open and people driven of the Internet.
Here is Paris we’ve heard from two presidential candidates today who consider the matter so serious that they come and speak to 1,000 bloggers from 37 countries. That says something beyond the fact that there is an election next year. These two had passion and a grasp of what is happening online. They engaged beyond platitudes.
All that said, others were not happy that politicians got time at the conference. Dieter Rappold has some views worth reading as does Tom Morris and Tom Raftery and plenty of others. Do a Google search and you’ll see the blogosphere alight in anger at what many label as the conference being hijacked by the politicians.
3LOVES, our free online dating site has attracted 500 profiles in two weeks since beta launch. 3LOVES is one of four social media offerings which are part of the Find It online classifieds and directory we are launching in partnership with newsagents.
One other surprise today looking at how newspapers and magazines are sold in Paris is the lack of rules. Here’s a foreign newspaper stand at one of the Presse kiosks – it’s easy to browse. The local dailies are close to the counter with the full cover viewable. Back in Australia we have all sorts of rules – how close to the front of the shop, the type of stand to use, the amount of space to give etc. Sometimes these rules get in the way of our customers. Here, with newspapers especially, it’s about easy access.