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

Newspaper distraction

I was in a petrol outlet this morning when a customer came in and asked if they had the AFL cards with today’s Herald Sun. The owner told the customer they had to go to the newsagent. The customer put the newspaper down and walked out. The owner then said to me that these newspaper promotions were “a waste of money”.

My takeaway was that newspapers are a distraction for this chap. He’s clearly frustrated with the product. His is a petrol outlet after all.

Publishers in their push to get into more retail outlets see their product treated as a poor cousin to the main product and while they may still get some impulse purchases, it is with the brand supporting promotions where they miss out.

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Newspapers

Cover-up The Age

Check out the American Express ad stuck on the masthead of The Age today and see another example of revenue coming before the brand.

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I am astounded that this placement passed quality control. While Fairfax bean counters may like the dollars, the editorial team must wonder where this will end.

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Newspapers

Magazine online growth

The Magazine Publishers of America website lists the Top 10 websites associated with magazine brands based on recent pageview data. It would be interesting to track similar data for Australian titles and correlate this with over the counter sales of the related titles. Take a look at PC World for example. 38 million pageviews in a month. That’s an extraordinary number.

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Media disruption

Supanews takes back two franchises?

Supanews has reportedly reached a settlement with the former franchisee of their Frankston store which the company locked them out of just before Christmas. The same source tells me that Supanews, or parties close to Supanews, have reportedly agreed to purchase a franchisee outlet in NSW. The franchisee advertised the business for $80,000 so no wonder they wanted this out of the newspapers.

Representatives of Supanews are talking to some newsagents about purchasing their businesses. Newsagents are skeptical, worried that the interest is only so they can access business data in advance of directly approaching the landlord. At least one newsagent has refused to sign the Supanews offered confidentiality agreement. It’s a tough situation for newsagents because the prospect of selling for a good price will make them very interested. However, it is important that they access appropriate legal; advice and ensure that their interests are well protected in the event of such an approach.

If the Supanews reports noted above are right, there will be some interesting discussions going among the new partners in Supanews, especially from the Angus & Robertson / Whitcoulls side I’d expect.

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Newsagency challenges

No one noticed Sensis Bidsmart was down for five days

I’m surprised that this was not covered anywhere and that I didn’t notice it. Sensis. BidSmart service was down from March 10 through 15. We have a small BidSmart campaign running for our Inkfast online ink and toner business – this runs separately to our retail newsagency and easily accounts for more ink and toner sales in a week than our shop processes in a month.

If Google AdWords was down I’m sure there would be reports. It’s a bit like someone turning off your marketing campaign. But we didn’t notice. Frankly, the BidSmart campaign was all but forgotten. Until Sensis emails us to advice that it had been off the air. Their apology email resulted in us logging in and revising the campaign. If we didn’t miss it surely there is a problem?

While I was playing with BidSmart today I saw some amazing traffic stats for some keywords which newsagents could play with – I’m not about to go into details here though.

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Uncategorized

Promotion works

The Ink and Toner flyer distributed to 20,000 houses around our shop three weeks ago continues to drive good sales. The promotion has boosted retail ink sales over the three weeks by more than $6,000. In our demographic that’s astounding. Add to this the additional purchases made by the customers brought in by the flyer and it is easy to label the promotion a resounding success.

Being able to quantify a marketing campaign in such a specific way is essential. In the case of ink and toner it locks in our commitment to run these campaigns regularly not only to remind the customers we have already but to grow the pool.

Not enough newsagents promote outside their four walls.

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Stationery

Happy UK Mother’s Day

UK Mother’s Day (today) is another micro season for Australian newsagents. It provides an opportunity to demonstrate a point of difference over other greeting card retailers. The more we are known for having a card for every occasion the more we will be shopped. The majors are not interested in this space and it amazes me that many newsagents ignore it as well. To me these micro seasons are what small business is all about.

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Greeting Cards

Kudos for Annette Sym

Mark Fenton-Jones has a good report in this weekend’s Australian Financial Review (pages 16 & 17) about Annette Sym and her Symply Too Good cookbooks. Annette has been a great supporter of newsagents, participating in store openings and other promotions. Newsagents give her books a prominent position in store. I like them because they fit well between cookbooks and health – to categories we have just brought together.

I am often contacted by independent publishers through this blog. They say I am against small titles because I want a certain level of return. What Annette and her team have done with her titles is create a respected brand which consumers seek out. While still a small publisher, her titles earn their place by selling. Her story is one which other small independent publishers ought to read.

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magazines

Newspapers up, newspapers down

The Newspaper Association of America press release has the good news that advertising with US newspaper websites increased 35% in the fourth quarter of 2006 compared to 2005. This is the 11th quarter of such double digit growth from online advertising. The same release records that print advertising fell in the fourth quarter of 2006 – retail down .9% and classifieds down 7.1%.

While publishers will drive newsagents and other retail and distribution partners to increase sales of their print editions, their main game now, in terms of investment and senior management focus, must be online. One cannot ignore the growth.

My concern is for the pressure by publishers on small business newsagents. Pressure such as where newspapers must be located in store – the best retail positioning; opening more competing retail outlets; running labour intensive over the counter promotions for little or no margin; and, driving down the real margin achieved from home delivery.

I’d prefer publishers to engage more openly with newsagents so that these small business operators can appropriately adjust their businesses now. There is a win win opportunity here for the publishers. Their denial to newsagents of any threat to paid sales is beginning to ring hollow based on the US numbers.

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Newsagency challenges

Quick Stick labels good habit products

quick-stick.JPGQuick Stick labels are another good habit based product for newsagents. They’re a strong brand, easily merchandised and support a good retail story without a chunky stock investment. We’re finding that Quick Stick customers are likely to return – hence the ‘habit’ tag. We’re also finding that Quick Stick sales are rarely single item sales. That is, people buy a box of labels and other products or they buy multiple boxes of labels.

Newsagents ought to be achieving a stock turn of six to eight a year with the right range. This is up on a year or two ago because Quick Stick products are stocked in fewer places. Bigger companies don’t like them because of the time involved in handling customer queries.

Newsagents wanting to grow stationery sales will need to carry at least sixty types of labels. I’d suggest more if you have the space. With a good range of stock it speaks for itself and acts as a magnet for customers. Quick Stick is not something to be timid about.

Our approach to rebuilding stationery this past year has been to build around strong brands which either through the nature of the product or range offer us a local point of difference. Quick Stick fits this and the range we carry generates good business elsewhere in the stationery department.

The only challenge is stopping customers taking a label of two.

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Stationery

The last magazine

Jeremy Leslie, writing at BusinessWeek.com, reviews The Last Magazine a new book by David Renard. Leslie shares the opening sentence of the book:

Magazines, as we know them, are dying.

The article is not as downbeat as this quote suggests. The review declares his love of magazines and outlines how he sees their future – challenged but surviving nevertheless – with digital formats playing a big role. The review is interesting and makes the book tempting. Unfortunately, I can’t find it here so it’s another sale for Amazon.

While some magazine categories are undoubtedly challenged in Australia, overall sales are strong. Weeklies continue to do well as do most women’s monthlies, health, fitness, and several other categories. Publishers and distributors need to help newsagents exit the dying categories before the losses are too great.

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magazines

MySpace news

Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog tells us that News Corp’s MySpace is getting into the new business:

MySpace is getting into the news business with launch due in early 2nd quarter, according to inside sources and the company’s own sales materials.

* MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
* Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
* MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:
Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the system
Submit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog
* MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!

My concern is that newsagents don’t see developments like this impacting their businesses. While the impact may not be immediate it will happen.

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Newsagency challenges

NRL tipping entries close today

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.

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Uncategorized

Gold Lotto down for 24 hours?

I am surprised that this story has not been picked up by any news outlet: Many Queensland newsagents have reported their lotto terminals being down for 24 hours to yesterday lunchtime. It seems to get back online they have to call a help line at the Golden casket office and wait a few minutes while they were reconnected to the network manually. Pretty frustrating for the newsagents affected.

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Newsagency challenges

Books the new free gift for magazines

Books are the tip-on of 2007 for magazines it seems. Last month Notebook came with a free book. This month New Woman and Eve each has a book as a gift with the magazine. Customers seem to like these free books more than the bags, sunglasses and umbrellas from last year.

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While there is a challenge sometimes in displaying the bulky stock, sales are such that it’s not a problem for long.

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magazines

Handling newspaper distribution delays

Check out the National Distribution Monitor webiste to see how wholesalers and retailers transparently handle newspaper delivery times. It was created as part of a strategy to improve newspaper delivery times, thereby enabling retailers to maximise sales. For those involved in negotiating supply issues with publishers around Australia, the UK website model could be worth considering. Newsagents often complain about the high cost to their distribution businesses of late newspapers.

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Newspapers

Magazine layout change boosts monthly titles

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Four days ago I blogged about the success we had moving Notebook next to our women’s weekly titles. Real Living is also selling well as a result of this move. We will sell out this month. While both titles were doing okay in our store, this move will result in us ordering additional stock for future issues. It proves that the location in our store was not helping the titles to achieve their potential. Better Homes is also benefiting but not as much – this is in part due to a co-location strategy we use for that title which sees it promoted elsewhere. Better Homes also has a much higher sales based before we moved it to this new location.

We have broken the MPA magazine layout guidelines with this move but I don’t think anyone would be unhappy with the result.

While it is not possible to load this high traffic women’s weekly magazine are with all sorts of titles, my view is that careful planning can see mid range titles better supported and sales increase as a result. Sometimes customers who don’t browse too far need to be shown what you have.

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magazines

Inspector Morse stuff up (part 2)

Further to my post yesterday about the Inspector Morse partwork stuff up. Yesterday afternoon we received 20 copies of part 1 of this new partworks product. We had sold all twenty copies of Inspector Morse by lunchtime today. Here’s the empty unit (photographed in our backroom) which we used to achieve this sellout in less than 24 hours – from the front of the shop.

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Partworks are a goldmine. Some of our customers for Inspector Morse from the last 24 hours have signed up as putaway customers. The challenge will b to ensure that we continue to get the stock we need to serve our customers.

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partworks

Selling your newsagency

I was talking with a colleague last night about the challenges of selling their newsagency. They have been in the game for ten years and want to purchase a bigger newsagency. Their business has been on the market for three months with little interest shown. He says it’s because of the market. I am not so sure. I’ll share below what I suggested he do in response to his request for suggestions on how to get more interest:

From the front of the shop through to the back make sure the business looks appealing to customers, that it is easy to navigate and that it does not feel cluttered.

Clean, clean and clean. You cannot clean too much.

Take all your stationery off the shelves and put it back on, neater and better laid out.

Make sure all your employees have clean and fresh uniforms.

Have flyers going out in bags as customers leave – show that promoting the business is easy. I good flyer to have while you’re selling the business is a two page A5 size flyer promoting your business as local, friendly and there to serve the community. People like to belong and they are more likely to buy a business which is well connected.

Make sure all your lights are working and are turned on.

Have appropriate music playing.

Reengineer your back room – make it look like a GREAT place to work.

Get on top of your paperwork – make the business look easy to run.

Have a good system in place for employee communication – so you can show that managing the team is straightforward.

Bring in a visual merchandiser to freshen your in store displays and make the shop look sexy – this is just like bringing in rental furniture for a display home. People need to see the possibilities.

This is by no means definitive list. Post your comments with other suggestions and maybe we could create a formal advice sheet.

Selling a newsagency is like selling a home. It has to look appealing – where people would want to ‘live’. If it doesn’t, they will move on to the next store available.

Of course, some buyers don’t want to see any of this because they get pleasure from turning a scruffy poorly run business into a local hero.

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Newsagency challenges

Fairfax uses editorial to drive it’s RSVP business

Click for commitment was a good story in The Age yesterday about online dating. The sidebar story, while listing various online dating sites at the end, was a pitch for Fairfax’s RSVP. Even thought our 3loves is tiny I would have thought it deserved a mention since it was targeted in a campaign designed to drive traffic for RSVP. But then we’re free and they are not. We’re trying to build something of value for newsagents and they are not.

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Online classifieds

Newsagent sales data

Several newsagents have contacted me about approaches made to them by parties interested in accessing sales data from their computer system. The pitch is that the newsagent allows the installation of a box between their front counter barcode scanners and their computer and that this box sends barcodes of all items sold to the company pitching the idea. In the return for their participation the newsagent received a gift or small payment.

My view is that newsagents ought to control the aggregated data from their stores. Only this way can they honour their obligations under current supplier arrangements. I am aware of work being done in this area and suggest that newsagents approached hold off for the moment.

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Newsagency challenges

When does a dead title smell?

Newsagents have been advised that the March issue of Gardens & Outdoor Living magazine, published by Horwitz Publications, will be its last edition. The question newsagents now have is how long to keep the title? The title has been pulled because of poor sales – below 40% sell through in many stores. Some newsagents have told me that following yesterday’s announcement, as proof that the publisher now gets what newsagents knew, they will early return the last issue and use the space more productively. Seems fair.

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magazines

Calling partwork publishers

I’ve been on a plane for the last hour and a half and thinking about my post this morning about yet another partworks stuff up. There has to be a way to connect newsagents and overseas partworks publishers and cut out the middlemen – the importer and the distributor – since they are where the most expensive problems occur.

Newsagents who embrace partworks do so wholeheartedly. In my store for example we would go hard on every new partwork offering. We’d consider a firm sale commitment as long as supply was guaranteed and as long as we got access to all the subscription deals the distributor offers through their website. We would even allocate a permanent high profile space in-store to promote the category. The current sporadic releases coupled with hit-and miss management techniques mean we cannot allocate such space.

So this blog post is a call to partwork publishers such as Marshall Cavendish, Eaglemoss and DeAgostini. Give us your partworks, deal direct with newsagents and let us show how successful your product could be in Australia.

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partworks
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