The photo on the left is the back of the ACP basket builder stand which I wrote about in my previous blog post this morning. Once we moved this stand yesterday, we realised we have to make good use of the back otherwise it would be dead space in a high traffic area. The result is this display for Men’s Style magazine. While it is nothing too special, we have made it easy for people to buy off the stand – something too often forgotten in retail displays. Once we created the display we realised that we only ever looked at this ACP stand from the front and for too long had missed the opportunity of using the back.

We are fortunate to have a basket builder stand from ACP Magazines. This is a stand in which we place popular ACP titles as part of a co-location strategy. The stand is usually at the front of our Frankston store, to attract passers-by. The risk in using the same location is that customers get store blind. Yesterday, we moved the stand to next to the main newspaper display. (Excuse the photo, it’s not the best.) While it partially blocks the entrance to an aisle, we figured this was worth the opportunity of more customers browsing the stand. Change in a business like ours is crucial. We have great traffic but most of it is for a single purpose each visit. Anything we can to to break that and get an extra sale is money in the bank.

Cleo gets front counter promotion with the exclusive music CD and two eye pencils which come with the latest issue. While we could wait for the publisher promotional push which usually comes in the second week, I’d rather go early. We did this last week with Notebook and sold three times our usual week one number in just three days. This counter position works well for us. We can create a display in less than ten minutes and bank the results.

The Australian edition of BBC Good Food was launched today. The marketing collateral supporting the launch is excellent.  It is a good publication, keenly priced and features Gordon Ramsay so it’s bound to do well. I have high expectations that Good Food will shake up the food category as Top Gear has the motoring category. Like with Top Gear, we are chasing more product so we can do the launch justice and run an aggressive co-location strategy and not just at the aisle end.

I missed The Ultimate Guide to Poker when it came in last month. While we have it located with sports titles, it will not find its market if just left there. We are promoting it as part of our Father’s Day pitch – next to our Poker gift packs. We will also include the title into our displays with newspapers. We are also thinking of how we might co-promote this and other poker titles with the Intralot poker scratch game. All this may seem like hard work for a small category. Our view is that it is worth it because it promotes range.

We have created a counter display for Home Beautiful at our Frankston newsagency. The free shopper guide with the magazine qualifies it for a premium display. Frankston does not have the slatwall behind the display – this will, be in our new shopfit.

We have placed the new look Notebook magazine at the counter at Forest Hill. It also qualified for this spot given the free mascara with this issue. For those new here, this space is between our two main registers. Behind the display is slatwall – crucial so customers can buy off a display

We appear to be in the middle of bagged magazine season. Right now, more than any time I can recall, we have more bagged magazines in store. This is happening in the car, craft and homes categories.

These bags hinder browsing. Browsing is important to sales. I appreciate that the publishers see value in the free magazine to drive sales. I disagree.

Publishers need to find more clever ways to drive sales. For example, If I were publishing an Holden and Ford magazines I’d stage a state by state trivia competition around the brands, get people loyal to the brands competing in a fun atmosphere with the brands the focus. I reckon that a $50,000 spend nationally could result in a more valuable sales lift than bagging and hiding the magazines from browsers.

Wine Collector is a smaller volume title from ACP Magazines which often gets forgotten in retail merchandising. Rhonda at our Frankston store created this stunning display using colour photocopies of the front cover and the one poster which we were sent for the title. While I often complain about in-store billboard advertising, this time I like that we are promoting a title and category most other magazine retailers will ignore – this is where we get a flow-on benefit as we are promoting range.