Several newsagents approached me weeks ago about GNS stock supply challenges. I approached senior management at the company and was told that there were some supply issues that were now resolved. More newsagents have approached me this week about the same issue. One asked me to post about it here to see if other newsagents are currently experiencing stock supply challenges with GNS.
Over to you.
It was good to see this sticker on a pack containing New Zealand Woman’s Day last week in New Zealand indicating the purchase of the pack raises funds for a local charity. This type of charity connection is a strong driver of boxed Christmas card purchases in newsagencies. It is a key factor in purchase decisions.
News Corp. newspapers are pushing its digital platform with ads in its newspapers promoting the free Samsung tablet with a twelve-month subscription. This is a compelling offer as the subscription cost is not far off the cost of the Samsung tablet they are giving away.
The offer values the news at 45.7 cents a day.
If I was News I’d be doing the same thing, maybe even more aggressively priced.
As a newsagent this offer reminds us there is no upside in print newspapers. While in some locations print is strong – such as tourist locations – the everyday regular customer will migrate as there is no point waiting to read a story you can have accessed close to the time the story was current.
Brands matter in retail and in our newsagencies. Brands provide us an opportunity to differentiate with competitors that are obsessed with house brands, usually inferior product sold for price more so than quality.
Brands invest in their customers and their retailers too. This is what gets shoppers shopping by brand. You only have to research online keyword searches to understand the importance of brands to the most valuable of shoppers.
I have been doing this recently, looking at what people search for when looking to buy and sure enough it is brands that matter.
With this in mind I was thrilled to see the new commercial from department store Harris Scarfe. Here it is…
I love their public declaration of love of brands. I love everything about this commercial, especially the choice of music. The Real Thing by Russell Morris is a perfect song for this TVC.
Come and see the real thing
Come and see the real thing
Come and see
Harris Scarfe and the brands they are partnered with are spending money on this TV commercial saying brands are the real thing. I agree with them.
Thinking about newsagencies, brands matter businesses. Take a look a stationery, people trust brands like Post-It, Scotch, Collins Debden, UHU, Pilot, Papermate, Bic and others. These brands are known, trusted. While unknown branded products are cheaper, people don’t look for them the same. They don’t search for them the same.
Brands promote themselves and, by extension, their retailers. Generic brands don’t promote themselves, they don’t promote their retailers.
In all departments in our businesses there are brands that matter, brands we ought to put ahead of cheap copies – because these brands will support us if we respect them like Harris Scarfe is in their TVC.
The Harris Scarfe TVC is a reminder of the relationship between retailers, shoppers and brands. We are more important to each other for the long-term than the relationship between retailers, shoppers and generic brands, copies.
I give preference to brands in each of my businesses including my newsagencies, I always have. Brands are important. Supporting them makes a valuable statement in our businesses.
I urge newsagents to stock and promote brands. Use them in out of store marketing. Like Harris Scarfe, be know as the brand business in your area.
The gifts coming with Better Homes and Gardens out this Thursday are terrific, very Typo like – something for us to pitch at the front of the newsagency.
Newsagents should place the BHG stand on the lease line, to drive traffic. It is a gift with purchase like this that can drive incremental magazine sales.
The calendar category has been challenging for years thanks to Calendar Club and their heavy discounts early. Their approach to discounting has taught shoppers to not pay full price f0r calendars. I have seen them pitching 2017 calendars at 25% off already.
While there are newsagents who do sell calendars at full price successfully, this can come with friction that can turn people off the business … without the business knowing it.
Pet Stock is strong in the calendar space, offering a large range of calendars pet lovers are sure to like. The brand they sell is Magnet and Steel. In the hand, to me, they don;t feel as good a quality as the Borwntrout range but I suspect that does not matter.
Pet Stock has 2017 calendars prices at buy 1 get 1 half price across their network of stores. While I was aware pet shops had calendars, I was surprised at the range I saw on the weekend.
More harden centres and homewares shops have calendars too – pushing this category into more retail outlets. This makes sense given the special interest nature of calendar titles.
The challenges are two fold – more outlets and discounting by major competitors.
With discounting so early in a season by national retailers, I wonder if the message to shoppers is: we have overpriced our products so we can make this discount pitch to you. That is what I would think if I was the shopper.
With only a limited range of calendar publishers at the premium end of the category price comparison is easy. This is why newsagents in this space need to look carefully at what others are doing.
I know of newsagency businesses where calendar sales are worth $15,000 a year. It is in these businesses where there needs to be a differentiating and commercial response to Calendar Club, Pet Stock and others. The best response is to switch focus and change the conversation. However, this is not easy.
If calendars are important to you, be informed about competitors and engaged with a differentiating offer. Make sure your investment is not harmed by the actions of big business competitors.
If you have items that you know are regularly stolen through regular spot stock takes consider these tips for managing to reduce the cost of theft.
The alternative is you complain about the problem and do nothing and that is not good management. Theft is something to be managed.
Out of store marketing is best focussed on what your you are not known for as this marketing is likely to attract people who would not usually shop with you. Differentiate your business from expectations rooted in history through change-driving buying and leverage those products in new traffic targeting marketing.
Through my work with newsXpress I am engaged actively in using social media platforms to attract new shoppers to newsagencies.
newsXpress trains its members on how to use Facebook and other social media to attract new customers. As a gift, this training is being made available to all newsagents in a FREE live workshop.
BOOK NOW. Here are the dates:
This will be a practical session with live engagement with business Facebook pages so you can see first hand how good posts can work for you.
Lottoland has written about another winner, a $300K prize for an Australian player. It is interesting to see the space they take explaining the games and their offer. The apparent confusion is something newsagents could leverage.
Reminder: My Advice on how newsagents can compete with Lottoland.
The newsagency counter is the best location in the business for easy to read calendars. The calendars are purchased on impulse without hesitation – usually two and more at a time. Check where you have yours placed. If not at the counter, I suggest placement there. Another location where they work is with newspapers so consider that as a second location. And, yes, these calendars have been selling for weeks now.
Given the cover of the latest issue of Smith Journal you may want to place it with your stamp magazines and / or with newspapers.
The cover is vital to impulse purchases of this title and this cover has a special interest appeal that we should be able to leverage in our businesses – if you place it thoughtfully.
The traditional card department in Australian newsagencies has not significantly changed in decades. A good looking card department may not be enough in this new marketplace with more competitions than we have ever had before.
Too often card departments are located too far into the business to be seen from outside.
In a new David Jones store in Wellington yesterday I saw the card department located adjacent to menswear. This is an odd placement since many would say men are far less likely to purchase cards than women. However, David Jones shop layouts are carefully considered and placements deliberate.
I think they have done this in part because of the challenges of their space and because they think it will work adjacent to menswear.
Maybe it is time you placed cards in a different location in your business. If you are open to this, think about what is right for you. You are more likely to have the right answer than your card company as you are the retailer and they are not.
In addition to department location and layout, think about what you pick to shoppers as they leave. Coles has recently started rolling out this placement near the store exit. My understanding is this is a Coles driven initiative.
I have covered this in my newsagency management workshops and at this blog.
Walk from your counter to outside the business and actively notice what you pitch to shoppers as they leave.
In one of my stores I have replaced a hole magazine unit with freestanding fixtures, including three card spinners. The spinners and other units in the photo run next to a magazine unit on the right, just out of shot.
The objective of the placement of the three card spinners is to offer magazine and other shoppers in the two aisles a secondary card range pitch to drive impulse purchases. The three spinners offer plenty of range, accessible from both sides. We selected these spinners as the cards they offer lend themselves to impulse purchases. Plus, the three spinners together tell a card range story – far better than a single spinner would do.
This location of cards with magazines is one of four card locations in the business.
I think newsagents can no longer run a single card department with cards in one location.
We need to change our approach to cards if we want to increase the performance of cards in our businesses.
Here are the two tweets from a newspaper or magazine publisher supporting newsagents in the last week:
Check out the lottery counter of a lottery outlet I saw in Auckland yesterday. This is a shocker of a business:
Now, check out the counter I saw in a Whitcoulls in Wellington.
I have seen this more professional and corporate look in many retailers here, but not independent superettes.
The Whitcoulls fit is space efficient and should cost less than what Tatts is asking retailers to install.
What is surprising is the difference between retailers here. It is greater than I see in Australia when it comes to lottery product branding.
I am glad I don’t sell lottery products as the cost of the refit required is a heavy cost on an agency line where the supplier is pushing hard to get the consumer to make the purchase online.
Check out the magazine space allocation in a Whitcoulls store in Wellington that I visited yesterday. This display supports 350 titles. I saw a similar space allocation in two other Whitcoulls stores yesterday.
I mention this today as there is a live question for our channel – How many magazine titles do we need to stock in 2017. I mention 2017 as there is no point looking beyond 2017 in my opinion.
If Whitcoulls has decided 350 is reasonable, should we? I feel 350 is too low a number and that the better number is between 500 and 700 titles – if you want any recognition as being a magazine specialist.
While there are differences in magazine retail in New Zealand, Whitcoulls is not that different to a large Australian newsagency.
I have been contacted by a journalist in the UK who is doing a story on tobacco and as part of the story they were keen to hear from retailers about any impact on sales of the change in tobacco pack size. Comments here welcome.
I was surprised to see this stand in a Woolworths close to a newsagency promoting the same Hasbro games offer with the Herald Sun. The newsagency had posters and no stand. The stand is the better deal in my view.
I wonder if News put money on the table for Woolworths to run with the stand. Newsagents received no payment for posters, floor stickers and other material they were asked to put up for the promotion.
Every time newsagents see what appears to be favouritism of a supermarket chain it encourages newsagents to retreat further from the traditional supplier.
Bauer yesterday launched a three month long promotion exclusively in Woolworths supermarkets across Australia. The stand in the photo is the in-store offer:
BUY ONE GET ONE ½ PRICE.
The Bauer titles involved are: Woman’s Day, NW, Take 5, OK!, Yours, Australian House and Garden, Australian Women’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan and Homes+.
A supermarket person I spoke with yesterday said they expect Bauer would be paying Woolworths for the space for the floor unit in each store for the three months and compensating for the cover price discount.
I get that publishers need to pitch different offers in different channels from time to time. Most of these promotions run for a week, two weeks or maybe the on-sale period of a monthly.
This three month long campaign by Bauer and Woolworths is too long. It has serious potential to divert purchases from local newsagencies to Woolworths. Is this what Bauer wants? Their actions suggest it is.
The newsagency channel people at Bauer, people who probably had nothing to do with the Woolworths decision, would remind us of the money the company spends on our channel – merchandisers, the Connections program, a business building program and reader rewards. None of these investments has tangible value for newsagents in my opinion. I would rather the company make a more direct and practical investment in our channel.
Newsagents account for 50% of magazine sales. This makes us the largest single channel of magazine sales in the country. The investment in our channel should reflect this and it should consist of offers and marketing that shows us as the dominant magazine channel.
The thirteen month long promotion in Woolworths is a mistake by Bauer in my opinion, inexcusable. It is an attack on small business retailers, the very retailers Bauer executives claim are important to the company.
I was at the Bauer Connections conference in Brisbane a few months ago and listened to the usual round of praise for newsagents and statements of how important the channel is to Bauer. The thing is, these statements are hollow when confronted with the Woolworths promotion.
This three month long promotion by Bauer exclusively in Woolworths has come at a time when the company is flexing its muscles with some newsagents. They are demanding magazines be located in prime space and that Bauer titles be given 50% of space. This is truly ridiculous. If they push that with me I will quit their titles as Bauer titles taking 50% of magazines space and magazines being in prime location in-store would not pay for the retail space.
The issue of Bauer space demands and the Woolworths promotion are connected as they are all part of today’s magazine world. The publisher is doing what it thinks is best to address crashing circulation and in that mix of activities is forcing newsagents to commit to prime space allocation and paying Woolworths to discount titles so as to pull sales from nearby newsagencies.
Yes, this is the conflicting world in which we find ourselves.
What should Bauer do?
They should produce compelling magazines that are highly sought after for content. They should make magazines harder to get. This will see shoppers value them more. They should support newsagents as magazine specialists as I have outlined here before when I called for magazine publishers to ditch support for supermarkets.
Yes, I know, I am not a publisher, what would I know? I could be wrong on this but I think Bauer getting closer to Woolworths will not work for Bauer in terms of their newsagent relationships nor in terms of the long term Woolworths relationship. I see Australia’s two big supermarkets as greedy, selfish and not good for local communities. I’d not want to be part of helping them hurt communities. I see newsagency businesses as family run, and local, vital to local community health. I know which of the two is better for Australia and Australians in my view.
We further trimmed magazine space without cutting titles and introduced John Deere toys where we previously had magazines. The result is a terrific uplift on John Deere purchases and no impact on magazines.
We are perpetually changing product locations, space allocation and product adjacencies. Standing still is not option in any retail business today.
This move, taking out a whole fixture of magazines, was risky as we had to find a way to maintain magazine range without hurting sales. Thankfully, it has worked.
This video has been a factor in the extraordinary success of the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens for us. Social media content has to entertain and it has to be short.
Placement of Graduation gifts with newspapers works as it puts the gift purchase opportunity in front of those who might otherwise not have purchased for the season. We have found this tactical approach to work better for us than a pretty display on an aisle end.
One comeback Tatts retailers can have against Lottoland is that they don;t sell lottery tickets. One way Lottoland combats this is with stories about winners, like this online story from a few days ago:
The advice I published here two weeks ago on how to combat Lottoland remains the most comprehensive advice provided to Tatts outlets thus far.
Too often newsagents include a photo of a cover of a magazine say say something like out now or the new issue of xxx is out now. This is the type of post many retailers do.
To me, the best posts about magazines either focus on an image on a cover or some other aspect of an issue of a magazine that lets you personally endorse it.
Take the current issue of Yours. We do love Denise Drysdale – who does’t?
This posts is a perfect opportunity to give something of ourselves and pitch a magazine without being too loud from a sales perspective.
Here is an example of a food related post, a close up of the cover of Better Homes and Gardens.
What is interesting is the shares and where they took the post. Looking at comments with shares, most were about how delicious the Christmas pay looked.
These are two examples of Facebook posts newsagents can do with magazines that work and look different to what others do with magazines. I am sharing insights with newsagents on how to use social media at a social media masterclass workshop series over the next few weeks. This is a newsXpress run workshop and is based on newsXpress training. Access is free and any newsagent can attend.
I will add Perth as well. The sessions will be interactive with plenty of time for questions. Spaces are limited as we want to ensure everyone can engage.
Another newsagent was hit by a ransomware attack last week. They paid $5,000 to get access to their computers again. Had they and their staff followed my suggested computer use policy they would have avoided the attach.