Richard Green, On The Front LineLast week the Independent had Richard Green on the front page. Their story highlighted the links between individual spending decisions that grow to effect peoples lives. In the bottom half of the report the say of the Solihull newsagent:'Hard hit - the corner shop 'Only half of the neon lights are on in the newsagent's shop. The owner, Richard Green, is trying to save money. A quarter of his weekend trade has fallen off since overtime was cancelled at the Land Rover factory down the road. A big part of his profit comes from cigarette sales. "On a Saturday and a Sunday I used to get 25 to 30 car workers coming in between 5.30am and 7.30am on their way to weekend overtime work," he says, perched on a tall stool behind the counter. "That's been cancelled for...

One From AlanAlan Wyle is a great fellow and is so passionate about Village shops it wasn't enough for he and his wife to run one, but he has been help village stores across Sussex for around 15 years. He has stsrted emailing posters for we retailers to display our difference to the multiples.Keep at it Alan and drop in next time you pass our...

Grown SuccessYesterday 6 customers claimed a free magazine after filling their Club Card. This was the best day so far for the loyalty scheme we launched nearly 2 months ago.There has been interest with some publishers, as well as our wholesale supplier, with one magazine publisher offering to help us enhance the value to our customers. We are still think how best to run with that one aswe wish to retain total control over how we manage the promotion.It is still to early to quantify what the promotion is doing for sales, but so far I am encouraged by how we have made it work.And the magazine customers are delighted with the chance of a free...

The New Man Got The Special TreatmentThe election of Barak Obama was something different and newspapers clearly planned for the event and expected the big increase in sales. The LA Times reports: 'Apparently looking for something old to go with something new (Barack Obama) and something blue (a more Democratic Congress), the American people bought newspapers in huge numbers Wednesday, a day after the historic election of the nation's first black president. rom the nation's largest daily, USA Today, to its more modest broadsheets, newspapers expanded press runs to accommodate enormous sales. Some papers even sold special gift editions and framed front pages. But news racks even if they were replenished with copies became barren in the blink of an eye as people scrambled to snag mementos...

A Missing NewspaperI started delivering newspaper in 1966 and have memories of late running newspapers, but only on days of real heavy snow. In the 1970's and 1980's it was the unions that seemed to cause most of the supply problems. But in 1989 we went independent with HND and really started to find what the problems were.With supply chain reoganisation and the wholesale house that our copies came through moving from 10 miles away to 25 miles things got a lot more difficult. As the 'new boy' I attempted to correct the service failure of the publishers and wholesalers to endivour to give my customers a good service.Of course this could only be a short term solution as we were picking up the entire cost of correcting a systemic industry failure. So we developed a strategy for staying...

Postage Stamp Vending MachineA few years ago my wife and I spent a week in southern Portugal visiting our daughter who was at the University of the Algarve doing a research year as part of her degree. When we went to buy stamp for post cards, the Post Office clerk used bar codes to scan the values on to her till. As the Post Office near to our shop had been computerised I was intriged to see that the Portugese version was somewhat different.While we were on Maderia we were able to obtain stamps from the street stamp vending machines. These print stamp lables on demand, so we were able to buy just the number we needed and post them straight away as the post box was just behind the...

The Boss Comes To CallKerry depot manager, Steve did Kevin's round today and he told me that they all liked the comment piece that was published in Retail Newsagent. As it was of a positive nature the Kerry Direct to Shop Managing Director, who recently visited his depot, asked where it had come from and how come his head office knew nothing about it.That's tough that I did not involve Kerry's PR people, but I am independent and where I find a supplier who wants to work with us to increase our profitability using the tools that their company provides then I am going to tell others about the formula. And at the moment Retail Newsagent are happy to publish my small stories.The thing that was clear from Steve's comments was that he is very proud of the work that Kevin is doing with us to...

Brought Up To Date, At Last While having a conversation with Jac Roper of Convienience Store magazine this morning about how to manage the sale of Age Restricted products I directed her to the internet for advice that retailers can access for guidance.Barking & Dagenham Trading Standards have a great Underage Sales Guide that I posted in March. I had let them know it needed updating for October One 2007. It is good to see that they have now done the work.Click here to see the updated Guide. The real trick for retailers to take on board for their staff and themselves is to never be judgemental about the age of customers, ask to see evidence like a photo driving licence, a passport of a Citizen...

Handling The IssueAfter recieving King magazine yesterday I emailed Mike Miram at Comag about getting copies of a wrong title for us and got a reply back from quite quickly. He is in Istanbul at a conference, but said he would get it investigated as he could see that King did not fit our customer profile. He will let me know why they allocated the title once it has been investigated.I also phone my contact at Smiths News Worcester Magazine Copy Allocation Centre to ask him to investigate how the title slipped through their system as we are on their range Capacity Trial that should mean that only appropriate titles are added to our range. One of the rules of the trial is that when a new title is added a non seller/poorest seller is removed from our standing order. Hopefully we will stem...

Tired, Sad And Shut Australian blogger Mark Fletcher posted this about the closure of another independent newsagent in Inverness. The Press and Journal say:'A fourth Inverness newsagents has closed within the space of three months, it emerged yesterday. And businesses leaders warned the situation would only get worse in the current economic climate because new regulations for retailers are set to be introduced. Kingsmills General Store, on Kingsmills Road, closed its doors on Wednesday, and has not reopened since. The same day, the store’s operator, Keith Orrock, was sequestrated – the Scottish term for bankruptcy – at a civil hearing at Inverness Sheriff Court.'Yes the business climate is hard and government have been attacking small independent newsagent over the past decade as...

Visit To My DadAt the end of our holiday we spent a few days staying with my father. He still lives in the village where I grew up so I have an interest in the shops that serve the community. In some ways the village has features that are simillar to the one where we live. It has around 3,000 inhabitance, it is surrounded by countryside, a majority of the villagers are over 50 years old and many have lived there for more than 20 years.My father has been telling me that the main village shop had changed hands earlier this year and the new owners had invested a significant amount of money in to redeveloping the store. It has a new shop front, a new floor, a new ceiling and lighting, it has new fixures and refigeration, a new counter and new layout.When we went to have a look it was clear...

A Lesson From The Races - Follow WinnersLast Wednesday my wife and I enjoyed the hospitality of News International when we attended the NewstrAid Race Day at Lingfield Park. There were over 200 people from all sides of the industry and NI's guests included wholesalers, retailers, a NFRN Head Office Manager as well as several people from Wapping.These industry Charity Hospitallity day's are a great opportunity to meet people that have different experiences and views of our industry. They help one to see it's challenges in a clearer perspective.A chance conversation I had with a supermarket News and Magazine Buying Manager certainly proved that. While we were awaiting to be allowed on the course from the car park we introduced ourselves and compared our experiences. It became clear that on...

Daily Mail Available On MaderiaThe Daily Mail and othe UK newspapers were available on the day of issue on Maderia. These editions are printed in Spain and for the Mail they retail at 2.90 Euros. The newspaper retailers all charge the same price that was written on to each paper. Clearly if there is a market place that is open for price flexibility Maderia is the place, but everywhere its tha same price.If standard pricing survives in a market place that doesn't have a printed cover price on newspapers what hope does the NFRN campaign have in the...

First Stop, GatwickFlying always has the drawback of having to go to airports. This time our transit through London Gatwick went smoothly enough and as we departed from the South Terminal we were not asked to remove our shoes as happens at the North Terminal.The one thing that I feel I need to reflect on is regarding the WH Smith shop on the air side part of our journey through. Both my wife and I found it difficut to work out what the merchandising plan was for magazines. It was though the staff put them out were totally in the...

Duncan holland writes; After a hiatus that was associated with moving us, and our household across the world to our former home in Christchurch New Zealand we are back at work in rowing.  I have two contracts for the summer; Head Coach for the Avon Rowing Club (NZL) and for Villa Maria College, also of Christchurch and NZL.  Stories and ideas from these new challenges will enliven my blog over the next months and, I hope, years. This weekend I am at the NZRowing Coaches' conference.  A great opportunity to meet old friends and colleagues and to catch up with what has been happening here while we have been away.  As you all know top level competitive rowing in New Zealand has been a success story over the last few years but the domestic scene has been...

Open For Business If the Tesco entry onto the American retail scene has done nothing else it has brought he biggest player down to play at its size. Today Wal-mart are opening 4 Marketside stores in Arizona and the remarkable Fresh & Easy Buzz has been covering this development for some months.In there most recent post on Wal-mart they say:'Wal-Mart, Inc.'s first four Marketside small-format, combination grocery and fresh foods markets open tomorrow morning (Saturday, October 4) at 7am in the Phoenix, Arizona region cities of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Tempe. The four Arizona Marketside stores range in size from about 15,000 square feet to a bit over 17,000 square feet.'Quite clearly these four stores are a completely different scale to their normal retail outlets and will demand a...

On The EscalatorI have now spoken to The Smiths News Customer Service Help line, not particularly hopeful that it will help as they seem to be only a conduit and not holders of the magic wand. It always worries me when people say that they will have to email someone else who has 48 hours to reply. It just lacks urgency.I have attempted to speak to the circulation department of the Irish Times in Dublin, but only got their voice box that advised me that they will return my call. We will just have to weight.Then I moved up to Lloyd Purchase, someone in the Smiths set up who will wave his magic wand and resolve the issue.as I have said to almost all the people I have phoned, carring waste paper around is just not profitable for them or ourselves. Its a bottom line...

More Waste PaperTwo copies of the Irish Times arrived this morning even though I have done what I thought was enough to tell Smiths News that I do not wish to recieve supplies of this title. Yes, the publishers have decided to run an availability promotion, but I think I have made it quite clear that we do not wish to participate.Yesterday I checked on Connect2U that we were reading nil for the title.Yesterday I spoke to a Smiths employee to ensure that we were reading nil for the title.Yesterday I spoke to a member of the Smiths News Crawley night team to tell them again I DON'T WANT THE TITLE.But it still arrives and it is still appearing on our standing order for next week.I will have to go further and talk to someone withe a big enough magic wand.The national customer care(?) line...

Trying Something DifferentAt the begining of September we hosted our first work experience school student for a week. It turned into an interesting experience for us as well as the student.Monday was induction including Health and Safety expectations for the week as well as an outline of how we planned to fill his 5 days. We produced a bare store plan for him showing the layout of the fixtures and fittings and got him to go around and fill in where the different product groups were so that if asked he would have a basic knowledge of the store.We then went in to till training and how the law applies to what and how we deal with customers including Alcohol and Tobacco. After some back room instruction on the workings of our till interface we set him 'loose' on the customers. He quickly...

Trying Something DifferentAt the begining of September we hosted our first work experience school student for a week. It turned into an interesting experience for us as well as the student.Monday was induction including Health and Safety expectations for the week as well as an outline of how we planned to fill his 5 days. We produced a bare store plan for him showing the layout of the fixtures and fittings and got him to go around and fill in where the different product groups were so that if asked he would have a basic knowledge of the store.We then went in to till training and how the law applies to what and how we deal with customers including Alcohol and Tobacco. After some back room instruction on the workings of our till interface we set him 'loose' on the customers. He quickly...

Could we do this in the UK?Mark Fletcher and his team have delivered a truly excellent promotion for Australian newsagents, at no cost to the...

Closing Soon Hastings Old Town Post Office was one of the 2500 targetted to close, but as the BBC reported things got a bit difficult with a judicial review of the closure decision. The solution a different kind of Post Office with a different cost structure. A Post Office Essentials.Postagelabelsuk.com recently blogged on the set up of the new office stating that it will soon be having a Post and Go machine installed as Brian the blogger says, an enigma.I recently heard that the Old Town branch is about to close has two serving positions and the new Essential PO, which is in a C-Store only has room and kit for a single service postion. Therefore an automated Post and Go machine will deal with the expected up kick in business that is likely to happen soon.No enigma really Brian, just a...

Good Times Ahead Des O'Dwyer visited us on Thursday with the main reason to resolve our Fast Track Restitution issue on the News of the World. I immedately took to Des, probably because we have both have spend our working lives in the newspaper industry from being paperboys on, accept that he choose publishing and I did retail.We spent ninety minutes not only talking about the late arrival problems we have expericenced with the 4 NI titles over the past few months, but we also went through my list of needs for a balanced partnership. While going through the points he give me some simple insights into the industry economics. He is a man that likes graphs and the illustration that I like best was about extra sales of the Sun. This I can understand as we are selling more Sun and Times today...

Warning, You Could Be Putting Your Business At Risk In this weeks Retail Newsagent the excellent Neville Rhodes wrote about the significant dangers associated with the NFRN's campaign of cover price. He covers the benefits of the current contract of supply and the fact that SOR is not a right under any circumstances. Retailers have to follow publishers requirements to retain the privilage.Neville poses answers to the to key elements who a newsagent should consider when planning any pricing amendment to newspapers. That is how will the customers and suppliers/publishers react? He says:'The first question can only be answered by the retailers themselves- they know their customers and should have a good idea how any such surcharge would be recieved. publishers would almost certainly react by...

And Its Yours, Free Less than 2 weeks into our Free Magazine Club Card promotionwe have given away our first magazine, Yours at a retail price of £1.40.Wow.It has given us a real thrill that this promotion has captured its first success so quickly. 11 magazines in 12 days is remarkable. We know the customer well as she uses our store most days.Finding a scheme that rewards this kind of loyalty will work well and give our regular magazine customers another reason to use us. When I handed a new card to a customer yesterday and explained how it works and told her that the free magazine could be worth upto £4, she said that she could have a glossy as she doesn't normally allow herself to buy those.Absolutely wonderful and just the reaction I like.As I have said before seeing our staff...

And Its Yours, Free Less than 2 weeks into our Free Magazine Club Card promotionwe have given away our first magazine, Yours at a retail price of £1.40.Wow.It has given us a real thrill that this promotion has captured its first success so quickly. 11 magazines in 12 days is remarkable. We know the customer well as she uses our store most days.Finding a scheme that rewards this kind of loyalty will work well and give our regular magazine customers another reason to use us. When I handed a new card to a customer yesterday and explained how it works and told her that the free magazine could be worth upto £4, she said that she could have a glossy as she doesn't normally allow herself to buy those.Absolutely wonderful and just the reaction I like.As I have said before seeing our staff...

Not Enough Newsagents Look Like This?Yesterday evening I went along to a NFRN meeting in Crawley that well over 100 people attended. It was a social event and trade evening that brought together families from Sussex to South London. It also had the London NFRN President and the Brighton Branch President as well as some senior people from the NFRN Head Office and 2 from News TrAid, the industry charity.To be honest I went along with a certain level of doubt about my future as a NFRN member following their recent National Council meeting and wanted to talk to some of the people who attended that meeting. I was able to talk through the issue with Paul Chambers, Federation General Manager.I am left with a feeling of sadness that the Federation top table believe they have nowhere else to go...

Good AdviceToday we received our free copy of Retail Express with our newspaper delivery. One of the regular features that I like to read is Nick Shanagher’s Food For Thought as his comments are always on the pulse.Today he reflects on the actions of Asda and Tesco in the light of much higher food inflation and asks:‘Now that the big grocers have started worrying, shouldn’t you be too?’Towards to end of the article he suggests that small retailer work out who their high value customers are and what it is we must do to keep them.Challenging stuff.We do newspaper home delivery so we know the addresses of many of our customers and have been targeting them with our regular flyers for the past 12 years. As we operate our store in a village with a very defined boundary we believe that...

Gen Y?Jarryd Moore has announced an interesting project on his blog, News4newsagent that is looking to improve that attraction of his family’s store to Generation Y. He is not telling any more about how they are going to do this apart from they are going to be using a non e-commerce website.In his response to a comment I made he says:‘The reason we are doing this is because the GenY are not a significant portion of our existing customers. As the majority of our existing customers’ age, newsagencies will need to be relevant to GenY or face becoming extinct. We can't wait until it happens to act - we need to build relationships with them now, we need to make ourselves relevant to them.’His action is about keeping their business relevant to tomorrow’s customers and it will be...

This Londis Has Got Its Post Office BackThe Londis store in Buckhurst Hill is to reopen its Post Office counter after a period of 8 months with out it. The BBC reports that Essex County Council is to invest £1.5 million in to a project that will see 15 communiities regain their Post Offices. The BBC's local government correspondent, John Andrew, said:'The decision followed "long and sometimes tortuous negotiations" between the council and Post Office Limited. Some could reopen as counters in libraries or in community halls.'Praful Chavda, who owns the Londis store owner says:'When we closed a lot of my customers told me how strongly they felt about it and I had a lot of support. It was a great shame we had to close, so when the opportunity came along from Essex County Council to reopen,...