I tried to get one newsagency supplier to get them to use the correct file formats for sending their invoices to one of our clients. This would save our client a fair amount of data entry.
What the supplier refused telling me that as the DD2 was copyrighted, they would not use them. Also if they used DD2, they would have to pay money to XChangeIT, something I doubt. I do however accept that if it is copyrighted it will be of concern to some suppliers.

What I immediately told them was if they were worried about copyright that they should consider using either standard stock file format which can be created by almost complete novices on computers or DDO which requires a programmer. Both of these POS Solutions owns the copyright and we certainly have no intention of enforcing this copyright. I then told the supplier that if they were in any way worried about this they could have that in writing.

Both these formats have the added advantage as every newsagency system I know of can import these formats which is not true of DD2.

The last possibility is the older POS Solutions INV file format, which again can be imported into any newsagency system. On non POS Solutions sites before you can use these formats however you need to change the extension from INV to DDO before you can import.

If anyone gets you an excuse like this, just send them to me.

The publishers of Australia have just released their first Australian magazine publishing survey.

I think most readers here will find it interesting. One point that I thought was fascinating was that 68% felt the newsagency channel was important.

The the ppt presentation is available here.

The executive summary here.

[Links were removed]

I was asked today how many people are actually happy with XChangeIT overall. It is a hard question to answer.

What I decided to do is look at those that have tried it and how many kept going with it. Out of over thousand of my newsagent clients that have tried XChangeIT on my software, only seven stopped using it. That is a very good record for a product.

Overall South Australian and Queensland has the highest usage, with Victorian and Tasmanian the least.

The problem from XChangeIT that there are still many of my newsagency clients that do not use their product.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/newsagent-killer-didnt-know-what-he-d…

Garry Angus's a well known Victorian newsagent working late in his newsagency was murdered by being stabbed 30 times in October 2011. Interestingly his killer admitted that he had purposely gone to the newsagency to kill Garry Angus.

The court has decided the killer was not guilty of murder by reason of mental impairment.

You can read more at the above link.

Yesterday I got a query by a user of ours with the DOS system who wanted to see if he could do an analysis of magazine's supplies with his system. He also felt that there was a big difference between magazine's suppliers.

The conclusions were interesting for 18 months; we ran our DOS system has a fine system for analysising sales data. If you use POS DOS you will find it in Stock->Supply reports->Magazine

Here is the result. You tell me if you can see much difference. I do not. Click on image below for more details

I think this shows the danger of using feel rather than data. Data should always be right.

I was asked how do I compare by result different magazine distributors in 2012.

The first point is that the magazine distributor does not see it the same as a newsagent. What a magazine distributor wants to see is that you have sold as many as possible. If they gave you two, and you sold two, then they are worried that perhaps if they gave you three, you could have sold another one. What they want to see is that you return one of each magazine issued. In theory, if you look at the levels, you are supplied that works out to an oversupply of about 35%.

In reality, these guys wear two hats, say they calculate they need 20,000 copies and in the warehouse they have 15,000. Someone has to be cutbacks. If alternately in the warehouse they have 25,000 copies, well they need to move them out of the warehouse which means to you. This is why the actual oversupply is close to 100%.

There is little that can be done about this, in the short term.

The main tool we use to compare the magazine distributors is the sell through rate. Overall out of so many magazines sent, what in percentage do you return.

Although the figures I have now for 2012 are only tentative, they do look similar to 2011, which was like to 2010. So I am not expecting any change this year.

Furthermore, what I can tell you looking at the figures, the two main suppliers are almost exactly the equivalent in their sell through rates. In sense this is not surprising as they are both using the similar methods in the same market they are not doing much innovative stuff from what I can see to get better.

http://www.adnews.com.au/files/dmfile/ABC_circulation_Sept2012.pdf

Results for the September quarter 2012 have just been released. Looking through the list almost all went down. However, it should be noted that most newspapers went up in price in that quarter so explaining some of the drop.

One point is that I do not see these sort of losses in newsagents; it would be interesting to see an analysis by distribution center.

From what we have, by supplier, the big loser was Fairfax, who went down 15.5%. Part of the reason they claim is that they have been pruning unprofitable areas. Whereas News Limited, I am sure are very happy with NSW results which despite a price rise went down only slightly.

Another interesting point is that Sunday went down; I think it is because the number of outlets handling Sunday papers are dropping.

Furthermore, the minor newspapers in an area tended to do worse than the main one. It looks like soon if this keeps up, we will have our one printed newspaper in a city.

[LINK REMOVED]

Tony Philbrick who is the manager of South Bank Beach news and Alf Maccioni, who is the CEO of the Australian Newsagent's Federation discussed with Steve Austin from ABC this morning the new News Ltd T2020 plan to consolidate delivery areas.

I think the big issue for newsagents was brought up here finally, what will be the effect of loss of circulation on shop sales in the newsagency?

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/were-back-the-age-returns-after-a-bla…

Newsagents were ringing us up today from both NSW and Victoria as many of the Fairfax newspapers did not arrive.

From what I can gather, the problem appears to be that their data center in NSW went down because of power problems despite it having an emergency generator. I wonder if their data center was tested properly as one point a tester of a data center should test is what happens when the power goes off.

Fairfax certainly did not do everything possible to manage the situation today as many who should have known about it were not notified. What they should have is an emergency list of emails so that if something like this happens newsagents, subscribers, business partners like us, etc are notified. As it was many newsagents did not know about it till they noticed that the newspapers was late and we did not realise the extent till newsagents did start to call.

Rent in Europe is very expensive as such newsagencies there tend to cram.

As I wrote earlier greeting cards are very small.

Lines that is much bigger than in Australia are children toys, which tend to be everywhere and smokes. It is smokes that is the growth industry in Europe in newsagencies.

One point is we have a unique service for our clients that can allow us to examine their data to suggest possible improvements. One department that comes up a lot is the drink department, our data checks suggest that Australian newsagencies are not doing, as well as they should in drinks. European newsagents must have got this message as they are much bigger in drinks then Australian newsagencies.

Here are some pictures

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If you are one of our clients and getting 4% on Optus or Telstra, please let me know. The odds are you have been put on the standard Optus rate, and you should be getting with us a bonus rate.

Hi

Here are a couple of pictures from the GNS Fair in Brisbane.

We were constantly busy both days, with many people interested in our new security integration with cameras and anti-theft gates.

We met with many existing customers, as well as potential customers looking to upgrade from their current system to PosBrowser.

Garth Brennan
POS Solutions Australia

In Pinewood newsagency, a large section of magazines area have been replaced by mobile and ipad cases

Here are some pictures

If you want to know more please contact

Cyril
Neeto - The Pines
Shop 32/181 Reynolds Road
Doncaster East Vic 3109

Ph: 03 98427944
Fax: 03 98424229

[link removed]

The YTD figures for the share price of Fairfax's shares.

I was concerned when it hit, 86 cents. Unfortunately, the slide has not stopped. Shares in Fairfax Media today are 46 cents, the lowest point in the company’s history. This is despite the ASX moving slightly up during the same period. Clearly, the shareholders do not like what they see now.

Fairfax has to do something soon, and I am sure it will be very radical. How it will affect us remains to be seen.

One newsagent a week ago asked me if I could look at his data and see what affect the loss of his paper rounds would have on their business. Although it is a country newsagency, they feel within five years they will lose their territory. Although they had a gut feel, but they wanted me to give them a second opinion.

The situation is that they do about a million dollars a year of which $600,000 a year is of newsagency items, and the rest is lotto. Account customers make up about 24.9% of total sales. Most of the customer account sales are for newspaper deliveries.

Although what our software does very well in providing information in the shop though many reports for shop layout, product placement, periods open, group sell, etc etc etc. This is not much good for speculative stuff.

For something like this you need what it is called is big data and data mining. What happens is a computer goes through your data using artificial intelligence, machine learning and statistics looking for patterns, trying to find something. It is all very fascinating and is a rather unique service we offer our clients.

So I looked through their data and was given pages and pages that looked like this.

In English, overall the computer seems to feel that for every dollar lost in customer accounts about 37 cents in retail will be lost to them in other departments. This 37 cents would include 3 cents in newspaper counter sales, a 10 cent drop in magazine sales, 8 cents in stationery and most of the rest in lotto assuming that nothing else's changes.

One point should be added is that things will change as if deliveries stop, the owner will be reducing the shop hours; this will affect sales too, but that is another story.

GNS had offered newsagents a website for ecommerce free. We have been doing a review of this site on behalf of our clients. Although this review is still going on, it does appear that with the latest improvements that it was now good. What I particularly liked was the ability for the newsagent to upload his own stock. I also thought the school book section was good too.

We will be coming out shortly with some more tools to make it even better for our clients.

The big plus of course for our clients is that the GNS website is free. No one percent fee plus extra fees like so many other sites and packages charge.

Another free site I recommend all our clients use is facebook but I will discuss that later.

Update 22/9/20: The YourNewsagent website nolonger exists

I was asked at the GNS show in Melbourne how much is the digital sales affecting printed newspaper sales.

In Appendix 2, here you will see the figures. On the major newspapers, I estimate that digital has caused about a 7% drop in printed circulation. Digital sales are now about 20% of sales.

Almost for all the other newspapers it is nothing. Its a lot of work to produce a digital newspaper, the revenue is much less and for those with small circulations there is a small market.

HWT and VANA put together a presentation on T2020. I think it was excellent.

What I particularly liked was a discussion on what actually, a 10,000 newspaper delivery entity would look like. Although I did have doubts on some of the figures quoted, as a preliminary review of what is involved it is a starting point.

It is available here.

There was a lot of interest in the GNS show today.

Possibly, much of it was because of the T2020 plan. The talk by Stephen Kaye who is the Circulation Director of the Herald Sun was well attended. I and a few other people came special just to hear it.

Here are some photos of our stand.

I will be there right near the GNS stand.

I think it will be well attended, the 2012 GNS WA Market Fair, showed attendance numbers were up on last year. That was despite the rain.