‘Our recent challenge has been to try to deliver our papers at an acceptable time to customers. This has proved to be very difficult as our wholesale deliveries get later and later.’

In the past I had significant difficulties caused by a variety of titles at different times. The Smiths News wholesale house at Crawley had a firm approach to newspaper arrivals after the ‘Cut Off’ time. They undertook delivery of the rest of the titles and reran the errant title(s), they told me that it was the only action that they had available to them.

After years of frustration with late newspaper arrival times we developed a strategy for staying ‘stress free’ HND retailers. It took some time, but here are the 12 rules that we use over the past decade or so:

1. Keep the customers informed of late running issues by getting the newspaper delivery staff to delivery a letter from me telling them why we can’t deliver and to come and collect their paper from our shop. We have a set of stock letters covering all the title ready for any failure.

2. Ask the NFRN about who to talk to at the publishers and wholesaler and their contact detail. Keep the NFRN Help Line informed of every failure.

3. Develop a positive relationship with the supply chain, both wholesaler and publishers.

4. Regularly talk to the important/key personnel at the supplying wholesaler, the House Manager & Night Manager and further up the management tree.

5. Discover from the Newspaper wholesaler when the ‘Cut Off’ time is and how they decide what action to take.

6. Use the National Distribution Monitor website to discover how many other newsagents are being affected by the poor arrival times of newspapers.

7. Continually explain why having all the newspapers by the Required Delivery Time is important and what the benefits are and the consequences of a poor delivery time and reruns are.

8. Ask customers to contact the senior managers/directors of the publishers of their newspaper to explain how the service failure affects them and you.

9. Ask publishers and wholesalers to assist in sales development.

10. Never just rant at the supply chain; they are at the beginning and end of the day important business partners.

11. Find different ways of getting the message out to a wider audience. I used a blog, Village Counter Talk where I regularly published items about how the industry ‘fails’ my customers, but today I would make use of Twitter. #DailyMirror_late_again sounds like a good hash tag to me!

12. Be patient, it takes time.

By implementing these rules we didn’t stop reruns, but we did gain a consistent first delivery time that enabled us to have a many years of stress free service.

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Latest ABC figures show sales at The Sunday Mirror and The People up 57.7% and 61.7% respectively year-on-year.

But the Trinity Mirror titles saw significant month-on-month losses, down 3.5% and 3.9%.

The Daily Star Sunday saw the most dramatic circulation spike after the closure of the NOTW and remains 98.9% ahead of last year, despite a fall of 0.7% during October.

Publishers of all three titles will be watching Wapping nervously amid growing speculation that News International is ready to launch a new Sunday paper.

The Sun and the mid-markets outperformed the rest of the dailies sector, thanks to a strong promotions campaign which included money off high street shopping.

Figures show sales of the Daily Mail are 6.5% below October 2010, compared to Daily Express, down 4.3%, and The Sun, which is 6.2% down on last year.

Quality dailies continue to struggle with the Independent down 19.5%, while the Daily Telegraph is 5.9% behind last year’s sales.

The Guardian’s decision to increase its cover price to £1.20 leaves it down 10.7% year-on-year.

In Scotland, sales of the Daily Record and Scottish Sun are down annually 8.7% and 5.7% respectively.

October daily newspaper sales

October Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.}

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Average sales of the Sunday Mirror are up 66.7% year on year, while the People – another title published by Trinity Mirror – is up 61.6%

Meanwhile the Mail on Sunday has dropped 6.1% on the previous month, showing that perhaps Associated aren’t as well placed to pick up former NotW readers as many thought.

On the dailies market the FT was the only one to see an increase of circulation as the fall in newspaper sales overall continues.

September daily newspaper sales

September Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.}

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“All markets require regulation,” she writes. “Market forces are red in tooth and claw and, unregulated, will lead to the survival of the fittest monopolist.”

Regulators usually restrict their findings to considerations of pure consumer benefits, which are “thought to be synonymous with the public interest”. However, Lady Kingsmill argues that there are clear distinctions to the interests of consumers and of citizens.

How might the issue be judged? Take the media, she says. Consumers might want the latest products and the lowest prices. Citizens might want free speech and privacy. Business interests would be profit and access to the market. Social interests might be around public taste and methods used in news gathering.

The public interest needs to be moved up the regulatory agenda, she argues.

Press for reform

“Is it appropriate to destroy a local economy, losing jobs and specialist skills?” she asks in relation to the Thameslink train contract going to Germany rather than Derby.

At a smaller level, the local independent shopkeeper is asking the same question as the supply chain appears to favour the big supermarket operators. “Is it appropriate that a supply chain can destroy my business?” he or she may ask.

News wholesalers are just one part of the wider issue, and retailers should be thinking about pressuring the regulators on all manner of things. NFRN’s Press for Reform is a start.

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He points out that thanks to Amazon he can order it himself and the book will be delivered straight to his door. Mr Mount’s article is entitled: Shed no tears for the death of the old bookshop. He is confident that book shops may survive but only if they get the emotional pitch correct. They need to provide a quiet yet communal atmosphere in which shoppers can sift through ideas.

It all sounds a bit fancy but the magazine retailer has something to learn. What Mr Mount describes is the commoditisation of buying books. In my local bookshop, when I ask for a book that they don’t have, they suggest that they can order it for me. That means I must remember to come back. It also means if their wholesaler is out-of-stock then there will be more delays. I have never said yes.

But what might make me say yes? This was the question that Mr Mount does not address. I am sure that if the book shop assistant was to tell me that it was an excellent book and they wanted to read it themselves and they would love to order me a copy, then I might say yes. Instead, the look I get suggests why don’t I look around and find another book, there are plenty in the shop.

What is the analogy for the magazine market. In an insight article published last year, Marketforce director Christine Lucas said that readers don’t really care where they buy their magazines – just as long as they can get hold of them easily and conveniently. Ten years ago, when we organised the World of Magazines, our research showed people did care and a great many would go to WHSmith if they wanted to buy a magazine. What can have changed? The arrival of the supermarket, which is now seen, according to Ms Lucas as the “mainstay of magazine sales”.

However, her research of WHSmith shoppers suggest many do still see it as a destination for magazine purchases, with 40 per cent visiting purely to buy a magazine. What would they do if the magazine was not available? A third said they would opt for subscription copies. A quarter said they would go to a local newsagent. But more than one in 10 said they didn’t know where they would go.

One problem is that selling magazines has been commoditised. By selling publications on sale or return, publishers control the supply of copy, which gives supermarkets an edge. Local retailers may not like this but think about the situation in these terms. Supermarket A says 10 million people will walk past your magazine on shelf A. Shop B says 1000 people will walk past your magazine on shelf B. Which gets your attention?

Another problem is magazine publishers don’t know where to invest. Consider PPA boss Barry McIlheney’s remarks as published by Retail Newsagent: “For pretty much the entire industry: headline print figure might be down a bit, website up yet again, big growth in the radio station, massive surge on the Twitter followers, ditto the Facebook page, total brand reach now into the millions.”

The lack of focus could become self-fulfilling. Brain Murphy of the NFRN, also talking to Retail Newsagent, said: “The battle for retail space will not become easier because of the lack of titles, new or otherwise. It will become harder as other consumer products seize the opportunity opening before them.”

As if to underline that opportunity, Retail Newsagent’s slim Best Sellers update on the magazine market was preceeded by an advertisement for Clipstrips, an innovation from Pepsico so that local retailers can get crisps closer to their till points.

How will the industry respond? “The future is to continue the focus on category initiatives and to work hard on category adjacencies, display and range management in store,” suggests Paul Keenan of Bauer Media. The problem, Paul, is it doesn’t compare with Pepsico’s promise: “Site at till points to increase slaes by up to 30 per cent.”

The entire sector lacks proper regulation, the NFRN claims, and “the phone hacking scandal represents the tip of the iceberg of the unethical practices” that are widespread in the sector.

The government’s online petition service was launched last month in an attempt to make government more transparent, and so far has only had two petitions achieve the magic number of 100,000 that will trigger a commons debate.

In the last 17 years the number of wholesale distributors has reduced from 74 to just two today, providing what the NFRN call an effective monopoly, and leaving retailers with no choice as to who they receive their services from.

If every member of the NFRN signed, this would still not be enough so NFRN national president Kieran McDonnell has called on retailers to “log in and sign this petition… and encourage all of your friends, family, customers and MPs to do so too.”

Clearly, this is an emotive issue for retailers, which is why this week’s poll is about exactly that. Vote here to let us know what you think of the issue, and click here to sign the petition.

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Having looked at Sunday and Monday to Friday I needed to look at Saturday to complete the refreshing of our newspaper display. We sell more newspapers on Saturday than any other day of the week, I am certain that we are not alone with this fact, but it does mean that getting the space allocation right is more important.

Our big two titles are the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph with casual sales of around 150 and 100 respectively. These are by far our biggest sellers and as with Monday to Friday they get the best space. The Daily Mail got a second facing on our newspaper display, but because of the size/bulk of the Daily Telegraph it got one face and several stacks.

With the demotion of the Independent and the ‘i’ newspaper because of poor sales (and in the case of the ‘i’ abysmal profit as well) to the base and the Guardian and Daily Express to their previous space on the bottom row I was left with a space on the second shelf. The Financial Times got the space last Saturday because at £2.80 a copy any extra sales that may be gained from a better position on the rack would reward us well. At 63.3p per copy gross profit testing the title with an improved visibility seemed a good experiment.

Incredibly, we doubled our previous weeks’ sales of 7 copies to 15, and sold out! This experiment delivered an extra £5.00 gross profit. Excellent.

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I have looked at the last three weeks sales and concluded that some titles are just not selling well enough to retain a full facing.

So with space for nine full facings and a base I decided that it was time to reallocate the space. I have demoted the Independent and the I newspaper to the base to join the Racing Post, Financial Times and the Argus. The two facings that have been freed up have now allocated to our two best sellers, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. This exercise has led to the Guardian and Daily Express moving to lower positions on the display.

It will be interesting to see what difference this will make to sales, but on the first morning customers have had no problem finding their choice of newspaper. I will come back to this in a couple of weeks and report on how the change has worked.

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So where have our News of the World customers gone to? We brought the Daily Sun on Sunday back in to our range expecting that maybe our NoW customers would be interested in buying it. Well we got that wrong as our peak sales of that title over the past month has only been 2 copies!

For us the winner has been the Mail on Sunday with an average net gain of 13 copies a week and a peak gain of 20. Next best has been the Sunday Telegraph at a gain of 12 copies and the Sunday Mirror has gained 6. Bottom of the pile is the Sunday Times with no gain at all. That means we are actually making more profit from our Sunday newspapers now, interesting!

With this information it has been easy to decide which title should benefit from the display space we used to give to the News of the World. And the winner of that contest is the Mail on Sunday.

So how are you using your former News of the World display space?

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With the current activity by newspaper publishers both at a national and a local level to reduce the gross percentage margin on newspapers, Mr Maggs’ question prompted me to think about how many newspapers a retailer needs to sell to break even.

As I wrote in my 19 July blog to understand our products we need to know the cost of the space that they occupy. Our 1 metre newspaper stand costs us around £35 per week in rent, rates, power, staff etc. With 4 shelves, that’s a little over £8 per shelf or just under £3 for a full face title.

To cover this we need to sell 43 Suns, 24 Daily Mails or 13 Daily Telegraphs per week. We easily do this with the Sun, Mail and Telegraph, but ‘i’ and some of the other newspapers don’t pay their way. There is another question to consider and that is what do these newspaper buyers also buy, what are they worth to our business? When I looked at this back in 2009 I found that Sun customers spent more than Daily Mail buyers.

So what to do, as clearly in a period of falling sales and reducing profitability action is needed? We currently have our newspaper display at the front of our shop and it’s the most prominent display, should we leave it there? Should we reduce the number of full facings to improve our number of break even titles? Or should we follow the advice by Wimbledon retailer Tom Searle and take control of the price/gross profit of the newspapers we sell as we do on almost all the other products we sell?

What do you think?

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Both Retail Newsagent and Retail Express are in very strong positions in the market. In Chris’s two year tenure on Retail Express he has moved the paper into the top three titles in the convenience trade market, while Retail Newsagent regularly tops trade press surveys of independent retailers.

“The key customer of Retail Newsagent is the retailer who invests £1.80 a week for our mix of great news and information. We have a great team of journalists and I look forward to helping deliver an even better product for our readers in the future,” said Chris.

Stefan meanwhile is looking forward “to providing retailers with the news and information they need in Retail Express’s trademark easy-to-use style.”

What do you think about the new appointments? Do you read either or both titles? Do let us know!

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