OPINION: Saturday newspaper sales

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.