The newspaper works, which is the propaganda organisation for the newspaper industry in Australia have put out a short powerpoint presentation about newspapers. It is available here.

I particularly like the comment that a smash hit on Youtube of 6.6 million hits would simply be Tuesday for a newspaper.

With all this doom and gloom about the media, many lose sight that newspapers are a terrific product. Everyday the consumer needs a new version, they take up little space, and you only pay for what you sell after you have been paid.

Have a look and see what you think.

Do you see the economics sense of an Age home delivered every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for 52 weeks, for $52. That is 25 cents a day. It works out to a saving of $330 off the newsstand price.

Many of you have been emailing adjustments to magazine companies as it is quicker than using the magazine's company website and cheaper than a fax.

Currently, Network does not accept them at all, waste of time emailing it to them.

Gordon and Gotch are sometimes accepting them. It depends who gets it there.

NDD is accepting them but clearly not for much longer.

We received the following from XchangeIT today, please be advised

IMPORTANT INFORMATION – NETWORK SERVICE SYSTEM MAINTENANCE 21 JULY 2010

Dear Newsagent,

On Wednesday 21 July 2010, the Network Services Servers will be down for maintenance between 5pm and 10pm AEST

During this time your will not be able to download Invoices nor upload Sales data and Returns Claims.

Please check your UNSENT folder and resend ALL unsent files once the Network Service Servers are up after 10pm AEST on the 21st of July 2010.

To confirm that your Sales and Return Claim Files have been sent to the distributors check that the UNSENT folder is empty:

1. Click the LOCAL DOCUMENTS tab in XchangeIT Newsagent Client
2. Click Unsent Files
3. If there are any files listed, click on each file and click the Resend To Distributor button
4. Successfully sent files will be moved automatically into the Archived Files folder

Thanking you for your cooperation.

Support
Ph: 1300 551 212

"Profit not Paperwork”

At present, Fairfax Media Publication Solutions still have not decided on the most suitable file format to send the data.

Contrary to some reports, they are still finalising the details with XChangeIT so unfortunately we cannot confirm the changeover date or the timeframes before it starts.

We have been trialling with GG and XChangeIT their new ‘smarter’, ’realtime’ returns system.

This will have a real plus as it will create an email acknowledgement to you within an hour you lodging your return in XchangeIT.

This should make it easier for you to reconcile returns.

The following has been sent out to newsagents with 2 weeks to go

Dear Agent – this is an early warning that Gordon and Gotch will be phasing out paper returns over the next few months. Supplementary Returns will not be accepted by paper after the 1st of August 2010 nor will any paper Point of Sale forms ( whether they are Current or Supplementary returns ). It is time for you to start exploring other options for your returns so you have plenty of time to plan for this change.

If you currently handwrite your returns on the paper forms that we send you each week then you will need to learn how to submit these returns on Gotch Connect.

If you currently have a Point of Sale system in your Store and are a member of XchangeIT we recommend you start asking your POS Providers for information on how to do EDI Returns through XchangeIT.

Our National Contact Centre will be able to assist you with your inquiries about this, or go to www.gordongotch.com.au to Register on Gotch Connect and start learning about Online Returns.

Now our users have to choose between either online or XChangeIT returns.

With Network not accepting paper printouts from our system, NDD disappearing, and now Gotch not accepting them, this means that soon our printed returns forms will not be accepted by anyone anymore.

Andrew Randall wrote an article on National Newsagent article Magazine Myth Buster which I will make a few observations.

The first is that he states is a rhetorical point.

“It is in the interest of no business to print, pack and distribute magazines and then have the majority of the supply returned.”

I would disagree with this comment; it is often in the interest for several players in the magazine industry, and it is far from being a rhetorical point.

The principal point to remember is a magazine company printing and distribution is only one of many costs of producing a magazine. Most of its revenue is from advertisers, who pay by sales. This includes the consequential damage from over supply such as extra shoplifting and accountancy errors, which is somewhere depending on the newsagency between .5% to 8%, counts as sales!

Then there are the magazine printers, who are paid to print copies of the magazines. They are paid more to print more. This often happens as one of the main problems of oversupply is because much of the cost of printing is setup. Once setup the more printed, the cheaper the unit price. However because of labour charges the setup is getting dearer then the run. As a result, runs are not getting tighter as suggested. What is happening is that some of the smaller magazines are being dropped. Once printed the excess leaves the industry with an awful problem.

Another big player in the industry is the magazine distributors. Often they are paid to deliver the magazine and then to pick it back up. The more they deliver and pick up the more they are paid plus they pick up cashflow as newsagents pay for the magazine delivered and only are credited when the items are processed for returns.

Next, I have doubts that his thoughts that things are getting much better is correct. I checked magazines gross margins on purchases (GMROP) for three newsagencies one in the city, one in the suburbs and one in the country. Five years ago in 2006 for the first quarters were 43.1%, 34.1% and 43.9%. Today the same newsagencies GMROP is 42.9%, 33.9% and 44.2%. I do not see much improvement, do you from these figures?

Finally, I agree with him the dumping theory is not relevant for the Australian published titles. However, let ask what about the overseas published titles that make up a significant percentage of magazine sales? What happens when a large number of unsold British magazines turn up in Australia, I suspect the same as five years ago they get dumped on Australian newsagents.

Fair Work Australia has just quashed an application to vary the retail award to reduce the minimum engagement of casual employees from three to two hours.

This decision will particularly affect delivery newsagents.

Thurgoona newsagency opened with much fanfare. Here is the newspaper report from the Border mail.

It is a superb bright fresh modern shop and as the newspaper article states it was immediately swamped with many people wanting a look ad we were delighted when the newsagent decided to put our system into this new shop.

The opening day was busy and our POS system performed efficiently. It has full integration with tyro eftpos and touch provides for secure functionality at the checkouts. It showed that an advanced point-of-sale with a state of the art dual checkout lane makes for better customer service linked into a back-office system.

In the industry, it is creating a wave as GNS, there are really putting into a massive effort in creating a model stationery display which when finished will be about 27.5 meters of stationery, two meters high. Here is a planogram of this new shop with the stationery marked in blue.

As a sign of the times, you can see that magazines have much less space than stationery.

What GNS is using is the industry standard category reporting which we created with them which you can read about here. . You can see some pictures of the stationery display that GNS is creating.

After our meetings with Gordon and Gotch, one important issue that came out of it was getting their sales data right. Gordon and Gotch are not willing to use the sales data until the majority of newsagencies are sending accurate and timely sales data. This apparently is not happening.

As such we are re-arranging our training timetable next week to make a special course on getting XChangeIT right.

They are as follows in date order:-

Victoria
Saturday 31 July and Sunday 1 August 2010
Melbourne Exhibition Centre

NSW
Saturday 7 & Sunday 8 August 2010
Rosehill Gardens Racecourse

WA
Sunday 22 August 2010
Challenge Stadium

QLD
Saturday 11 & Sunday 12 September 2010
Exhibition Building,
RNA Showground

Dear Garth

Our next Newsagency Training Course is scheduled for 19th to 22nd july.

Could you also please confirm if you are available to give your usual presentation on Back office efficiency through technology on

Tuesday 20th July at 12.00 - 12.45pm?

As you are aware we ask all attendees at our Training Course to evaluate each session presented, to help us ensure our training is providing the information and support newsagents will need when they take over their new businesses.

For your benefit I am providing you with feedback from the evaluation of your presentation at the last Training School.

We ask participants to grade out of 10 on value of information and presentation/style.

Your presentation was scored 9.5 for value and 8.5 for presentation and style with comments 'Good Value' and 'Very calm and easy to understand system'.

Thank you for the contribution you make to help us present this course to newcomers to our industry.

 

 

Regards

Ashley Anderson

Administration Assistant / Reception

Australian newspaper publishers have agreed to issue sales reports monthly.

I hope they give in their sales reports last years figures otherwise it will take a year before we get comparative figures on a monthly basis which is what we need.

We have had discussions with Trader TAG about the problems of a paper every other week. Since it does not fit into the weekly routine of newsagents, and because it is distributed through Fairfax, which does not use XChangeIT files, it has proven difficult for newsagents to remember to process them every second week. Therefore Trader TAG were missing out of many sales as newsagents forgot about them. Our recommendation was that Trader TAG use XChangeIT or failing that they email newsagents with XChangeIT files. Neither was possible but it does not matter any more as Trader TAG is going weekly.

Many are rushing to produce a special edition covering the rise of Julia Gillard to Prime Minister.

So we are expecting there will be a few changes now in magazines schedules. As a result, I know we are going to get plenty of calls in our computer support bay today so we have put another person today on support.

It will be interesting to see how it effects the sale of magazines in particular.

It will cause some problems too as for example the Woman’s Day, will have a “photo tribute” to her in a special edition today. Next week's edition, however, will be an updated edition of today’s. Many regular buyers of the Woman's Day may not like that.

There are several important changes in the XChangeIT files coming down. The most important will be the alignment of the week numbers to the return form. I would like to thank ACP for these changes.

Hi all

We are due to deploy our changes to the DD2 files this week with the first file being sent on Sunday afternoon. A summary the key changes we have made that will benefit all agents is as follows:

* Alignment of week numbers to return forms
* Change of the delivery time of files, now 3pm prior to on-sale day.
* File grouped and named by delivery date, makes search easier on the XchangeIT central site for missing files.

Attached are files that we have been generating for a week from the new process for you to validate if required.

Once again thank you for your help.

Regards

Daniel Tisi

Supply Chain Project Manager

One of the major points that came out of a meeting today we had with one of the XChangeIT suppliers today was getting the sales data right. No company is willing to use the sales data until the majority of users are sending accurate and timely sales data so although we might be one what the newsagency industry has is zero.

We will be doing a campaign to our clients to explain the importance of sales data, and offering to make sure their system is sending back accurate and timely sales data.

News Corp were short and direct to us about this it will be all normal.

There will be no Financial Review on Queen's Birthday, Monday 14 June 2010. The Financial Review will stop on Saturday 12 June and start on the Tuesday 15 June. Surprisingly there is no bumper.

We are putting together an information sheet. It will go out in the next few days.