Changing the way we merchandise roll-wrap in the newsagency
We are having success pitching roll-wrap outside the card and wrap department in the newsagency, and outside of the card company packaging.
While the Hallmark branded box looks professional and facilitates easy shop floor placement, we wanted something different, something that made the product the hero rather than the corporate brand.
My experience is people buy wrap for the design more so than the brand of the product. So, making the product the hero was a goal for planned changes in how we pitch roll-wrap on the shop floor of the newsagency.
Here is a before picture next to an after picture:
We have four of these stands, all placed outside the card and wrap department, each in a different location and each with carefully selected roll-wrap. We have no more than two designs in each stand. The stands are checked daily to ensure they pitch the product in the best possible light.
This work is part of a broader project changing our approach to cards and wrap, reaching out of the destination location to capture more revenue from people visiting the business to purchase items outside of the card department. The goal is to make the experience in-store more appealing and more memorable than in a traditional newsagency and certainly than shoppers see in a supermarket.
The wire stands we are using are from K-Mart and cost $6.00 each. This is a small and easy investment in a different and more visually appealing approach.
Small steps like this are important in growing sales and increasing the average spend of a shopper visit. Gone are the days of one or two big steps that can be taken to grow revenue. Instead, we are in this world of many small steps and this approach to roll-wrap is one.
If you engage with it, I hope it works for you as it is for me.
Traditionally, newsagents would ask card companies to supply all fixtures and setup the type of display I have written about here. I think this is a mistake. Own your approach. This gives you control and control is paramount. Historically, too many suppliers have had too much control over our floorspace, to our detriment.
Smart Valentine’s Day impulse offer
Here is the smartest Valentine’s Day pitch I have seen, an impulse pitch at the sales counter of a very funky gift shop in New York. The card selection is the key – non-traditional. This is the way to get people buying Valentine’s Cards who would not usually do so – with funky product placed ideally for impulse purchase.
Cutting up the Valentine’s Day poster for impact in the newsagency
I love the handiwork of Chris at one of my businesses. He cut hearts out of the corner of two of the A1 valentine’s day posters, bringing them alive in a way beyond the poster artwork. The result is porters that come alive. You could almost say they tell a story.
The hearts are tumbling into the products we are selling – the cards, plush, chocolates and gifts.
While two posters hanging above the Valentine’s Day display would be good, especially these posters with the simple Loving You message, Chris’ creative efforts have resulted in something far more effective, far more noticeable.
This is a good example of taking merchandising material provided to the business and making it better – as well as making it unique to that business. For a season like Valentine’s Day that involves many retailers, being different is important. It gets you noticed above all the noise and remembered.
I have seen people see the posters while walking past the shop and post them out to someone they are walking with. That is a bankable result as far as I am concerned. These front of store displays are all about getting people noticing you as they walk through the mall as people shopping with you who would not usually shop with you are where revenue increases come from.
The other aspect of what Chris has done that I love is the symmetry of the display. This enhances the impact.
The best way to not have an average Valentine’s Day season in your retail newsagency is to not be average in your approach. No supplier will help you not be average as they have many retailers they serve. Being not average has to come from within your business.
Pitching products for impulse purchase at the newsagency counter
I love the way this gift and card shop in the US handles an impulse purchase pitch at the counter. It makes good use of space between two customer serving locations, using what would otherwise be dead space. It pitches products easily purchased by those close to the counter.
I think it is important the unit is curved. That makes it easier to navigate, easier to shop and less visually harsh in my view.
It is the type of unit that could be made and pushed up against the counter without being built-in, without costing too much money.
Many newsagency counters I see are old school, pitching a product mix that has not changed in years, achieving little in the way of impulse purchases at the counter, most likely not contributing appropriately for the premium space allocated.
The approach shown in the photo shows how one retailer has created new space to achieve a better financial return from expensive counter space. I think it is worth a try.
My advice to any newsagent considering something like this is – don;t use a shopfitter and their shares are likely to be considerably higher than if you purchased the item from a cheap furniture place or had a local hippie knock something up.
Spend as little as possible to trial this or any other similar future idea you have for your business.
Thoughtful product placement adds to theatre in the newsagency and drives sales
Take a careful look at this photo and see the value of thoughtful product placement. Click on the image to see a larger high-res version of the photo.
Look at the squirrel: he is looking up at the acorn-like ornament being held by a hand above his head. The hand is attached to a larger figure outside the photo. This thoughtful placement places each item in a connected scene. The scene represents a story. It is theatre, in-store.
Rather than lining products up as you see in mass retailers, this display is more thoughtful, more entertaining and more engaging. It is the type of display you see in a higher end homewares or gift store. It is a display newsagents selling gifts could do. All is takes is thoughtful engagement with the products you purchase with care, with a view to telling a story.
Telling a story like this requires obsession with storytelling, in the belief that the story will drive sales. It does drive sales. I saw it for myself.
We can’t be average in visual march rising choices we make in our newsagencies for average makes shopping with us unmemorable and there is no commercial future in that. We have to thoughtfully buy and thoughtfully engage on the shop floor.
Looking around my newsagency a couple of days ago I saw plenty of opportunities for this level of engagement. Opportunities for linking products, even products outside the same departments. All it took was inspiration from this squirrel display.
Footnote: a reader messaged me asking why write this on Australia. Well, many newsagents are working and with most businesses closed I figured content that challenges might get more attention than at a busier time.
Sunday newsagency management tip: change the colour of one wall regularly
Use a wall or a nook or some part of your shop where you use colour on the wall to be bold, noticeable and as a backdrop for you making fresh moves to reposition your business. This photo shows one retail supplier using black as a backdrop for a bold homewares display. Stunning. Inspirational.
Click on the image to see the detail.
Terrific magazine store design
The Hudson News at Grand Central Station has a busy thoroughfare on either side. The store designers embraced this with a circular design while at the same time creating a space that brings you in and makes news the feature – with the ceiling news ticker and TV screens dotted throughout with current commercial new playing.
I love the feel of this shop. It is perfect for its unique high traffic location.
I get that most of us could not justify this type of fit. That said, there is plenty to learn from segmenting magazines through to making the range enticing. Take a look at this photo showing how they pitch a segment:
I love the line: Takes you places.
The Atlanta Gift Fair redefines the gift opportunity
I am grateful for the opportunity to walk the many floors across the three buildings of the Atlanta gift fair last last week. While there were plenty of suppliers with the squall products, there were some exciting new products to see along with new approaches to retail and visual merchandising.
This year was different to last year with suppliers more keen to do business. For example, within 24 hours of meeting with a supplier I received an email from them. This is not usually the case. – no, they wait for the long show to end and then do the follow up. The more attentive response this year indicates a keenness in a tough marketplace.
What is fascinating about the show is the range of what constitutes gifts. In Australia we are bound by what the buyers of our wholesalers select. Getting to Atlanta I get to see what those buyers miss. It is fascinating and can open to opportunities.
Every newsagent with a gift department needs to continue ti evolve the offer. They need to decide what their specialisation is. The days of being a general gift store are gone. Price is an issue too. Restricting yourself to lower price gifts could deny you destination traffic that could be valuable. In fact, at Atlanta I saw many opportunities for specialisation that could work in newsagencies.
Country newsagents are especially fortunate in the gift space as they tend to have the retail space and captive market to work well for them.
The fair itself is attended primarily by women 35+. Our group of three guys with funny accents was a bit out of place. But since Americans love a good accent we were able to charm our way to some cool stands.
Here are my top five takeaways:
- Product range refresh is vital to your success. Often, this means supplier refresh (change).
- How you display products is vital to success.
- Colour is crucial to telling stories.
- Walking the floor and interacting with what you sell is essential.
- Love what you do. It’s not a job, it is a life choice.
I have more than 300 photos from the fair. Here is a small selection to reflect some what I enjoyed.
Cool visual merchandising idea for newsagents
I took this photo in a funky shop last week and share it here as inspiration. To provide focus to some products they created a wall in front of the wall, to make for what looks like a shrine. They lined the cavity with gold paper and painted the new wall a nice contrasting blue. The result was a display you could not miss as you enter the business.
Ignore the products they are displaying and focus on the idea – of creating a feature space for a low cost, creating a space everyone entering the business notices as it is different, unexpected.
This is a perfect, simple and low cost way to get people looking at a category of products you want to feature. What is even better is that the materials you use can be repainted and used for another display at a later stage.
On the display itself, the more we make our businesses look less like newsagencies the better for this helps shoppers shed newsagency related perceptions when they shop with us.
Christmas wrap at the counter of the newsagency
Check out the placement we have of Christmas wrap and tape at the counter. There is no missing this wrap display by shoppers at the counter. I love it as it is bold, pitches range and is drives impulse purchases.
I also love the decision to place a bin of tape next to the wrap – it is at the right of the photo. This placement is working a treat for us.
After the photo was taken we introduced a false bottom to lift the remaining stock higher in the display unit.
This approach to Christmas wrap is designed to reinforce that we can satisfy any need.
The other purpose of the approach you can see in the first photo is to challenge the shopper expectation of the newsagency counter. We don’t want customers to think they are in a regular newsagency.
Terrific window display in Ballarat
I love this Christmas window display by one of the team members at newsxpress Middle in Ballarat, Victoria. It is inspiring as it creatively pitches a range of products for Christmas in a level of visual merchandising often only seen in major retailers.
I like that the display includes the tatts promotion on the side, maintaining the promotion obligation but doing it in a way that works with the stunning Christmas centrepiece.
Also, see the Christmas cards in the display. Showing how people use products they can purchase from you will absolutely drive sales.
I am told plenty of customers are commenting on the display. This is inspiring.
What does your Christmas window look like?
Crappy plush display disrespects product
This photo shows a display of plush items in a c-store I visited earlier this week. The premium plush items are promoted between a couple of food fridges. There is no respect for the product, no story being told. It is a poor quality display from a poor quality retailer.
Everything a retailer stocks deserves to be displayed professionally and respectfully. Premium items, like these are, deserve better. Independent convenience stores have some of the worst displays I have seen. It is good to see local newsagents often doing better.
Comparing Woolworths to the newsagency
This photo shows the placement of Total Girl magazine, which comes with a free Beanie Boo, in my newsagency at the weekend. We are using a large Beanie Boo to attract attention to the magazine. The display is placed two metres into the store and can be seen by people in the mall. In fact, the large Beanie Boo is a magnet for attracting shoppers.
This photo shows the placement of the same issue of Total Girl magazine, which also comes with a free Beanie Boo, in a Woolworths supermarket I visited two days ago. There is no call out whatsoever, nothing special reflecting the publisher’s investment.
I am proud of how the team at my newsagency engaged with this opportunity compared to Woolworths. This is the type of thoughtful engagement by small business newsagents compared to disengaged team members at supermarkets.
Newsagents offer publishers a different experience, one that is specialist, supportive of magazines in a way you never see in a supermarket – unless the publishers ays extra for extra support.
The more publishers support newsagents the more support they can expect from newsagents. The heart of the relationship is commercial, after all – or, at least it should be.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: clever use of a mirror in the shop window
The bear in the photo is facing away from the shop window – and looking in the mirror. This simple placement is more effective than if the bear was staring straight out the window. It is fun and haunting, which is keeping with the Halloween theme. I love the use of the mirror. It offers a fresh approach to grabbing attention of those in the street and grabbing their attention is the first step to a sale.
Unprofessional magazine display at a Coles supermarket shows why they should not get magazines
This photo shows how a Coles supermarket in Melbourne had Country Style magazine shoved into their magazine fixture yesterday morning. It was the second Coles I had been in in 24 hours with this magazine handled this way. This is appalling for Country Style and all magazines as it screams: we don’t care about magazines!
What does the publisher expect? – they sent considerably more volume than the space allocated for the title (because of the free shopping bag packaged with the magazine) and, I suspect, did not pay for extra space in Coles.
Yes, I get that the bag is a free gift and designed to drive sales. All it has done here is facilitate a messy display that disrespects the product.
In your typical newsagency you would not see this. We are more professional at handling magazine issues that require more space than usual for the title. Sure, we complain about it, but we do the work – because we are proud of our shops and how we represent what we sell. Some newsagents store the extra stock in the back room while others shuffle magazines around to accommodate a larger than usual issue.
The irony of the situation is that supermarkets like Coles get more money than newsagents from some publishers to support magazines yet they support the category with less care than newsagents. That is wrong and publishers ought to see it – but they won’t because they think they need supermarkets. More fool them.
Publishers who want their magazines handled professionally ought to quit supermarkets, support newsagents and fund newsagents so we can make a living wage from the category. This would be a win for the publisher and a win for newsagents. It would stop the mess in this photo at Coles, a mess that disrespects Country Style magazine.
What really galls me is the ignorance and arrogance of the publishers behind the MPA trial when they say newsagents need more training. This photo and what I saw in the other Coles show that oles staff need more training.
If you see similarly appalling magazine displays in supermarkets please send photos to me so we can shine a light on this.
Using a mannequin to drive sales in the newsagency
It was not until we took an apron we had for Father’s Day off the shelf and placed it on a mannequin that people started to notice and purchase them. The result is a reminder of the retail maxim: tell a story. The mannequin is proving to be a useful tool in the newsagency as it holds a range of products, is easily moved and presents a pitch not expected in a newsagency.
Stunning retail theatre in London
A couple of days ago I got to visit and get a good look at Choccywoccydoodah, a chocolate shop selling chocolate cakes and confectionery.
Their displays are stunning and inspiring, showing the value of allowing good products to be the hero. The fittings and the shop itself are not relevant as the products are all you see.
When you first enter the shop you are hit with a sea of colour – so much so it is hard to notice individual product. Once you have been in the shop for a couple of minutes and have realised that everything on display is edible you realise you are in a special place, especially for chocolate lovers.
This is the sort of shop you talk about once you have returned from a trip. It is a one-off, a wonderful place you’d probably want to visit again.
Thinking about it over the last couple of days, while we do not sell these stunning chocolate cakes, the challenge for us has to he to create stunning retail experiences that set our shops apart from others selling what we sell. We can do this through our buying but more so through thoughtful displays that leverage colour to create a visually rich experience.
Inspiring, innovative Visual Merchandising
The most innovative and inspiring visual merchandising I have seen over the last few days in the UK was in a pop-up gift shop on Carnaby Street. Nothing purpose made here. A trestle table and some bricks. The natural timber and brings provide a warmth base to the display and the shop overall. Click on the image for detail.
Attention grabbing magazine display
This fanned stack display of the latest issue of Porter magazine is eye-catching. The photo does not do it justice. Many entering the shop where I took the photo stopped and looked at the title – this is the most important function of any display.
Newsagents receiving sufficient volume of a title to create such a display ought ti try it if they do not do so already.