A mother of a three-year-old recently told me that she couldn’t get a copy of one of her daughter’s favourite magazines – Fun To Learn Favourites – in her local shop.
Despite asking the shop assistant whether they stock the magazine on several occasions, she was always told that the shop didn’t have the space to hold any more children’s titles than it currently does. As a result, she now stops off in a nearby Waitrose or Sainsbury’s to buy the magazine.
It’s understandable that space is tight for any independent shop, but I was amazed the retailer hadn’t jumped on the opportunity to shop save the magazine for her. Just by offering to order the magazine in for her, the retailer could have made £1.99 every fortnight – not to mention the additional purchases she may make on every trip to collect it.
With the PPA ploughing a lot of money into promoting its Just Ask shop save and home news delivery campaign over the past two years, ensuring your shop displays this point-of-sale material and making sure you and your staff always offer to order a title in, could really improve your sales and prevent customers from deserting you for a multiple.
Kirit Patel
05/03/2011
No wonders the retailer was not interested-have you ever tried to get the wholesaler to add or increase -it is impossible and not effective-all that happens is that the central allocation takes over and nothing changes-try speaking most independent newsagents and they will tell you that they get all the titles which have no chance of selling-the top titles they need are always in short supply-big boys get them and little one loose -the whole process is full of difficulties.May be its because the person who is in charge has far too much work and only concentrates on bigger and better accounts and indirectly drives customers to larger outlets and not the local ones.-the facts are that because the retailers do not get what they need-the space left empty-is being now being allocated for other products-may be its publishers driven.-that is the way retailers who have given up on the industry see it