A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

AFR reports Bauer to cease magazine distribution

The Australian Financial Review is today reporting that Bauer Media’s Network Services will cease operations:

German media giant Bauer Media is planning to wind up its Australian distribution business Network Services Company in early 2016 with rival distributor Gordon & Gotch to pick up the job.

I doubt that Gotch will pick up the job. I suspect titles they take on will be as a result of negotiation between Gotch and the publishers involved and not Gotch and the Network Services division.

As this is not an acquisition, I don’t see a role for the ACCC.

I have been aware of talk of this move for the last ten days but have not written about it as it was speculation. Even now, details are thin. We need to let the parties involved work through things before jumping to conclusions.

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magazine distribution

The challenge of lottery products on your business Facebook page

Facebook has strict rules for the promotion of lottery products and the age of people you can promote any products to through your business page if you sell lottery products.

The rules are so onerous that it may be worth not losing lottery products as something you sell.

Imagine you have products that are ideal for 13 – 17 year-olds. If you have lottery products listed as something you sell, your posts will not reach 13 – 17 year olds because of the Facebook age guidelines. You can see the Facebook page term here.

I have seen retailers go from eating none in the 13 – 17 age group to reaching thousands simply by changing the mix of products they sell.

On the east coast, given that Tatts aggressively promotes its products on social media, there is no major loss in my view if you pull back from connecting with the Tatts brand from your business Facebook page.

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Lotteries

Are you running a Christmas sale already?

Screen Shot 2015-12-02 at 12.48.56 pmI was surprised to see a nextra newsagent talking up discounting Christmas gift items on the Today Show today on the Nine Network this morning. Discounting this side of Christmas feels desperate to me.

Maybe I am wrong. What do you think? Of course, they may have bought at a discount, making the discount not a real discount as such.

I set myself up to not discount through offering items that are not easily price compared. This coupled with a genuinely valuable shopper loyalty offer negates the need to discount. Indeed, I am finding it easy to achieve above suggested retail for more unique destination items.

I was pointed to the story by several newsagents surprised at what this newsagent was doing and the margin impact it could have.

The Today show story itself was a nonsense story, not focusing on anything long enough to be of real value. It was kind of click bait but on TV.

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Newsagency management

Using social media to get companies to respond when traditional communication fails

I have had success recently with a bank and a telco by using social media, Twitter actually, to draw their attention to issues when their usual communication channels had failed to work for me.

Without being rude or unreasonable, I reached out to each via Twitter and this resulted in my concerns being put in front of someone who could help.

The outcome in each instance has been terrific – because the companies in each case had a structured approach to social media including monitoring mentions outside usual office hours. This is important as if having tried usual channels first – going out complaining on social media without trying other channels first is unfair.

Footnote: newsagents ought to note the need to respond outside usual hours as this is what people on Facebook and elsewhere expect. Gone are the day of the business being closed when the shop doors are closed.

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Social Media

Believing your own spin can guide you to bad management decisions in your retail newsagency

A newsagent recently had a crack at a supplier about poor performance, saying the supplier was letting them down.

Looking at the sales data, I saw that the products from this supplier are down 5% year on year but the overall transaction count for the business are down 11%. This tells me the supplier is performing above average.

I can’t stress enough the importance of using data to support any claim made about your business, especially when dealing with the supplier.

I was asked to look at the data as the supplier was experiencing good growth in other locations nearby. They wanted to know if the problem in the newsagency in question was their issue or a business-wide issue.

My review of the data indicated a business-wide issue. At first, the newsagent would not accept this. It took a confronting discussion looking at data on their computer system for them to accept that their view was not matched by the evidence.

This was not about winning an argument. Rather, it was about guiding the newsagent to make business decisions based on facts rather than half facts.

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Newsagency management

An example of how Network Services denies newsagents the ability to manage magazine supply

Publishers wondering why newsagents early return need to look at this example. The data on the Network Services website shows the sales volume. The newsagent is requesting supply closer to actual sales, to limit their financial exposure. The Network website rules forbid the newsagent from doing this. This is exactly the type of evidence that ought to be submitted to the ACCC.

Screen Shot 2015-11-30 at 10.17.39 am

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Ethics

Newsagency software companies challenged to keep up with the pace of change

Just as newsagency businesses are changing so is newsagency software. Traditional and non traditional suppliers are expecting more of the software and this is pressuring the software companies to invest considerably to keep up.

Speaking from my own knowledge as owner of Tower Systems serving 1,850+ newsagents, we have eight newsagency business specific projects in development for newsagency software – involving retail as well as distribution – at the moment with most of these projects focused on business areas that would not have been involved just a few years ago.

Technology is playing a more important role than ever and newsagents will be able to use new technology to mine for new opportunities and new shoppers.

It is exciting to see these developments evolve and unlock opportunities for newsagents.

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newsagent software

A request for help from the folks behind Lunch Lady magazine

Australian magazines are important to us, especially Australian magazines not sold in supermarkets – they are our point of difference. Please take a moment to read this call for help from the publisher of Lunch Lady:

Just wondering if you can help us let newsagents know not to send back as many early returns. As suspected we have received quite a few early returns and it’s a shame because we have an overwhelming amount of people email and call us to say they can’t find it or it’s “sold out”.

We do a lot of marketing through instagram and people are literally hunting it down at newsagents across the country. The engagement so far has been outstanding – very similar to when we started frankie. People who buy it LOVE it and want to find it easily in newsagents.

I understand that newsagents have a lot of magazines to consider, but I do think Lunch lady will be a success for them if they give it a chance. We are doing lots of marketing and brand awareness. I think the fact people are going from newsagent to newsagent speaks volumes.

Some early feedback below including great shout outs for newsagents who stock it…

https://www.instagram.com/p/-lGutcmYck/?tagged=lunchladymagazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/-NmSdMo2a1/?tagged=lunchladymagazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/-P6Fl1Leki/?tagged=lunchladymagazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/-VZ6BOrIp5/?tagged=lunchladymagazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/-Z9-_2kH9F/?tagged=lunchladymagazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/-aR6WmHhNU/?tagged=lunchladymagazine

As always any help would be much appreciated.

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magazines

Kikki K competing with newsagents for greeting cards

IMG_2201Kikki K is pitching strong competition with newsagents this Christmas with their three for two offer for Christmas cards. Their approach is the same as Typo but for an older shopper. It is in every Kikki K store I have seen. Be aware of this.

The Kikki K offer is differentiating compared to the traditional newsagency offer unless you are doing the Hallmark Hot Press 3 for $10 offer or unless you run a front-end loyalty offer like discount vouchers. In fact, in my own newsagency, the discount voucher offer is better value than the Kikki K for. However, I don’t have the resources Kikki K has to promote.

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Greeting Cards

Can’t give away the newspaper giveaway

IMG_2279We could not give away the gas leak detection giveaway free with the herald Sun on the weekend. We asked customers and most said no thanks with a quizzical look – like, what is this and why are you offering it to me. This promotion is not relevant to us, especially at such a busy time of the year.

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Newspapers

Some newsagency supplier websites turn you off doing business with them

Some product and service suppliers to newsagents have the worst websites I have ever seen. They are a barrier to doing business. Too often when I speak with a supplier about their website the answer is they are working on it. In the meantime, they complain newsagents are not doing enough business with them.

Here are the faults I have seen in the last few days with some newsagent supplier sites:

  1. Out of date information.
  2. Poor graphics.
  3. No product images.
  4. No e-commerce facilities.
  5. A 1980s look.
  6. Too many mistakes.
  7. No useful downloads.
  8. Not automated login access management.
  9. Not mobile friendly.
  10. Serving consumers ahead of stockists.
  11. Not listing stockists and making finding them easy.

A website is your shop window. If you want people doing business with you it needs to be stunning and it needs to be changed regularly.

A good supplier website should give me everything and more I could get from a good rep.

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Customer Service

Sunday newsagency challenge: repurposing the newspaper stand

IMG_1924Newspaper stands no longer need to be in prime position or taking as much space as they used to. My challenge today is: use this prime space for more valuable items through which you re-position your business. Place newspapers in a more space efficient floor unit.

This photo shows a terrific newsagency I visited recently. The Christmas tree, off of which they are selling ornaments and other products, is located where their newspaper stand once was.

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Newsagency challenges

Sunday newsagency management advice: managing spinners for success

I have a love-hate relationship with spinners. I love a clean shop without them and then find myself bringing them in for specific tasks and promotions.

Here is advice designed to help you make the most of the spinner opportunity.

  1. Keep them tidy. Duh! This is very basic advice. But it needs to be said. Daily you should have your spinners checked and tidies. Move products to the front, keep products clean, pose products to show them off, if appropriate to the products.
  2. Keep them full. A half empty spinner will not work as well as a full spinner. This is retail 101.
    1. If you plan to keep a spinner for the long term, order stock regularly to keep it full. We know that a full Beanie Boos spinner will around 20% more sales than a half empty spinner. Keep your beanie Boos spinner stuffed to the brim. For these long-term spinners check stock levels weekly.
    2. If a spinner is a one-shot – get it in, sell it down, take it off the floor – once it starts to look empty, consider taking all stock off and placing it elsewhere in-store. Leaving it on the floor and half empty will hinder sales.
  3. Move your spinners. One a week tweak spinner locations to keep your shop floor story fresh. Have a plan. Don’t move them just to move them. Move them to drive sales – to get the products considered by people who may have missed them so far.
  4. Respect the brand. Never put product on a branded spinner that is not from the brand. Not only would such a move disrespect the brand it makes you look like an unprofessional retailer.
  5. Use thoughtful adjacencies. When placing spinners next to each other, think about the shopper and what they are looking for. This will encourage a shopper attracted to a spinner to consider the products on the spinner next to it.
  6. Avoid orphans. There is nothing sadder than a lonely spinner at the back of a shop. It’s usually half empty and looking tired and sad. It does nothing for the products or the business. Find it some friends or remove the stock and throw the spinner out.
  7. Spinners have a limited life. While a spinner for which you no longer have the original product can be useful for displaying other products, don’t work the poor thing beyond its useful life. Hideously bent wire, cracked and broken pockets, no signage, seriously chipped paint, broken casters … these are all indications that the poor old spinner ought to be tossed out.
  8. Leverage traffic hotspots. This only works with certain products on spinners – locate the spinner next to high traffic generating products such as weekly magazines, newspapers, lotteries etc. The products need to be products shoppers of the destination items will purchase.
  9. Leverage seasons. Around your cluster of cards for Christmas, Mother’s day, Father’s Day etc place spinners with products appropriate to the season.
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Management tip

Sunday newsagency marketing advice: leverage obscure

IMG_2120 (1)Where can you buy dice? From a newsagency of course! Sure a toy shop may have dice as might a major like K-Mart. But good luck finding it from either. Your local newsagent is more likely to have dice and to make it easy for you to purchase. However, the newsagent is not likely to promote this in any way.

My marketing tip this week is to call out obscure items such as dice and promote then on social media and elsewhere.

Make sure you are known as the go-to retailer for hard to get and infrequently purchased items.

A test I did of this recently revealed stretch community interest in where people could reliably purchase such items.

Consider a feature somewhere in-store, away from Christmas business, promoting obscure items.

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marketing

Saturday newspaper sales important to newsagents

A deeper analysis of over the counter newspaper sales indicates Saturday remains a valuable newspaper day. While sales are down, they are, generally, down less on a Saturday. In most capital cities, the decline on Saturdays is less than for the weekday and Sunday edition.

Newsagents who are placing newspapers further into the shop and pulling back from other engagement may want to consider what they do on a Saturday. This could be the day they treat newspapers differently, to leverage the stronger interest on this one day of the week compared to the rest.

if you are going to promote newspapers, Saturday is the day to do it for sure.

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Newspapers

Magazine floor unit helps pitch mag at Christmas

IMG_2202We are using the strong well-branded Pacific Magazines floor display unit at the front of the business to promote magazines in with our Christmas ranges. With magazine sales lifting through the Christmas season, tactical placement of the unit is a key factor in maximising this opportunity. We place this unit outside the magazine department as this is where see it is works best. I recommend it.

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magazines

Using Doctor Who to drive traffic for the newsagency

IMG_2110 (1)Doctor Who is one of those worldwide product licences we can use to drive traffic and revenue for the newsagency. Using the image of one of the various Doctor Who 2016 calendars, posters, figurines, books or other products we can get good traction on Facebook and elsewhere through regular posts as well as boosted posts.

We are using this to attract new shoppers to the business – and it is working. We find the best posts are those using an image like the one I have included here. It is colourful and therefore easily noticed in a Facebook feed.

Our newsagency businesses are full of licenced items like the Doctor Who calendars that we can use to drive traffic. Using them is free and takes little time. It’s no brainer marketing.

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marketing

Magazines as a Christmas gift to drive newsagency sales

IMG_2196Magazine sales spike from now to Christmas as they are purchased as Christmas gifts. We can drive sales by calling out titles as ideal gifts. Australian Coast to Coast Country Style is one such title. This is a perfect gift for someone overseas – easily posted and showing off Australian beauty. I love the cover of this issue. Take it out of the magazine rack, place with Christmas gifts and include a handwritten bookmark pointing to it being a Christmas gift for overseas friends. Send them a bit of Australia.

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magazines

Harpers Bazaar barcode issue

Network Services has advised of a barcode issue with Harpers Bazaar that needs attention at the store level:

Network recently distributed an edition of Harper’s Bazaar where the barcode that was provided in the XIT data did not match what was on the magazine.

An email communication was sent out to newsagents advising of this error and to update the barcode in their point of sale system to the barcode on the magazine cover for that product and issue code.

–       Incorrect Barcode 9313006005407 12

–       Barcode on magazine 9313006007739 12

This edition’s issue code is 1512, however we’re seeing a large number scans coming through for 1412, last year’s DEC edition. It seems that these agents have not updated the barcode “9313006007739 12” to apply to issue 1512.

If the magazine continues to scan as 1412, these agents will be scanning sales at the 1412 price which is different to the 1512. It also means that when the title is recalled it will be scanned out as 1412, and so reject in the return claim.

In the Tower newsagency software resolving this is easy. Go to Utilities, scroll to Change/Merge Barcode. Enter the old barcode in the top box (without the space). Enter the new barcode in the second box (without the space). Click modify. You;re done. Other software companies are welcome to provide advice here for newsagents.

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magazine distribution

Another reason to not pay there ANF $60 a month

Screen Shot 2015-11-26 at 8.36.00 pmFurther to my post today looking at what newsagents could spend the $60 a month is costs to be in the ANF, consider this promotion by the ANF of Hubbed. I think the ANF promotes Hubbed because of a commercial relationship, the details of which are not disclosed.

My view is that industry associations ought not promote commercial activities. They should not play favourites because when this happens they leave themselves open to a claim of bias.

they will say they need to engage in commercial activity to fund their activities. I disagree with this. Newsagents either want an association or not. Direct funding by newsagents should be the only source of income, for the sake of transparency and trust. Such a move would make the association a genuine servant of members.

Hubbed has competitors who do not get a look in with the ANF and the various communication channels of the ANF because they are not a commercial partner of the ANF.

Criticism I make of the ANF for their selective promotion of suppliers to newsagents is seen by some here as criticism of the association. Rather, I am critical of the use of the association as a commercial activity supporting newsagent suppliers they like for reasons that are not clear and transparent.

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Newsagent representation

What $60 a month could buy your newsagency and why it matters

$60 a month does not seem like much but play it out over a year and you have $840. Why $60? This is what ANF membership costs in some states.

When a newsagent asked me recently if I thought them joining the ANF for $60 a month was worth if, I talked with them about what else they could spend the money on.

Before I get to the list, I suggest newsagents think about what they get for the $60 a month it costs to be a member of the ANF. I cannot think of any tangible benefit. For all their talk of lobbying and representation on policy – the bread and butter of a good association – the ANF does not have anything to value to point to. So the question about the value of $60 a month is important.

Smart newsagents will take the $60 a month the ANF would have cost and invest this in new traffic strategies that add  value to their business.

Here is the list of how one could spend $60 a month that I discussed recently with one newsagent:

  • Facebook advertising. $10 can put an ad in front of between 5,000 and 8,000 people depending on your location. $60 can buy plenty of new eyeballs and eyeballs drive new traffic.
  • Google advertising. At between 3 cents and ten cents a click, your website, e-com site or other online presence could achieve 2,000 clicks and more. Each click could be someone new to the business and could result in feet through the door.
  • Visual merchandising. $60 a month could buy close to two hours in-store of a visual merchandising professional on a regular call cycle. This could be someone who provides you with a fresh look in-store as well as training for your people.
  • New product lines. While funding this from the monthly saving, over the course of a year, investing $840 in a new product line fresh to the business could generate More than $1,000 in gross profit and attract new shoppers to the business who also purchase other items that make the $840 investment worth in excess of $2,000. Yes, there are specific lines that fit this criteria. So, in year two, you’d have another $840 to invest as the first year’s investment would be paying for itself.
  • Dinner outside. Have a pub meal with your business partner away from the business, to talk about business. You are certain to look at the business differently and through the conversations reveal to yourselves valuable opportunities you might have missed without such time out.

Sure I could add other items to the list. I wanted to go for ideas that helped attract new shoppers and give the business fresh appeal.

I am serious in suggesting newsagents think about alternatives for the $60 a month they pay for the ANF as $60 a month invested wisely ought to deliver between three and four times the cost to the business.

Every dollar you spend is a business decision. Think about the alternatives and consider what you could do in your business.

The $60 spend is about relevance to your business today as it is only the money you make from the business today that matters.

38 likes
Newsagency management

Crappy plush display disrespects product

IMG_2170 (1)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.

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visual merchandising

Newspaper publishers snipe at each other when they ought to focus on their customers

IMG_2174 (1)News and Fairfax are sniping about layoffs at their competitors. With print copy sales continuing to decline and ad revenue down it is only natural the publishers want to cut costs.

Publishers ought to focus on creating more compelling products for today’s marketplace. With editorial roles at the heart of what publishers create, retaining and hiring good and important voices ought to be a core goal.

I want a newspaper I can enjoy for more than the 2 or 3 minutes I give many I pick up to read today.

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Newspaper distribution
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