Last time, we were complaining that their catalogue was big. Well now it has grown. This one is over five thousand items.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

http://mumbrella.com.au/fairfax-could-drop-newsprint-when-broadband-rol…

Many think it is only a question of when the newspapers stop printing. Where I disagree here is I do not believe the paid online model will work, few will pay for something they can get free. The only ones that will pay are advertisers.

Still in the short to medium term, it is likely that Australia will move to a one-newspaper town as in the US. Many newsagents now already live under such a regime.

XchangeIT in November will turn off their old system so all newsagents that intend to use XchangeIT must upgrade soon.

The only trouble we expect is with people using windows 98. If you intend to use a windows 98 machine please contact us AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Any reader here would have read for almost 16 months our concerns with the sales from weekly magazines. Many went into denial even though I had access to some of the best information in the industry through our benchmarking system.

Now it is clear we were right. Here are some people in the industry talking openly about this drop in weekly magazine sales and whether this drop in sales is structural.

To newsagents even if there is a big structural drop in the weekly magazine market, magazines are still a big market thus still attractive.

Our clients just have to be smarter and use for example the posbrowser magazine sales reports to identify those magazines that sell. As I blogged early, currently 41.6% of all magazines coming into a newsagency are expected to sell nothing.

A formal offer is going out now to all DOS users that purchased from us a DOS system in the past three years (from 1 May 2006) that are affected by the latest XchangeIT price rise.

Although this decision by XchangeIT came to us as a shock, we feel that we should help.

We will supply you with posbrowser software free. This will allow you to continue to get the cheapest rates for XchangeIT.

This offer was also communicated to XchangeIT so they can pass it on too.

Our understanding is that everyone running XchangeIT will soon need to update to the new version of XchangeIT.

Many will need to update your operating system to handle this new version of XchangeIT.

XchangeIT specifications are stated as:

Windows 98 is not supported by XchangeIT as it is no longer supported by Microsoft. We are currently checking with them whether the new version can run on 98. In theory it might be able too.

Windows 2000 needs to have Service Pack 4 (SP4).

Windows XP needs Service Pack 2 (SP2) installed

Windows Vista need service Pack 1.

I suspect that they have not tested Windows 7 Beta. So please do not use that.

If you need to upgrade to run the new version of XchangeIT, we would suggest you plan as a minimum Windows XP as Windows 2000 on July 13, 2010, extended support ends. As I expect XchangeIT will probably drop it after that.

To check what version of Microsoft Windows you have

On the taskbar at the bottom of your screen, click Start

Click Run

In the Run box, type in winver

Click OK

A box displays the windows version that you are running

Some asked me today that they want to use their connection points to buy a computer. Never having done this before I decided to call the Administrator of the ACP connection programme. ACP is happy to do this. However the administrator was concerned, that few newsagencies could have that many points. Connection points do not go far.

This is not something I recommend as it is unlikely any connection points so spent could be claimable for tax. Say you need a TV for home and a new computer for work. If you use the connection points for a new TV and bought the computer, you could claim the computer off tax. Conversely if you bought a computer for work using connection points and bought a TV with cash, you would be unlikely to be able to claim the cost of the TV. This is a common problem with most reward systems.

However she said, if someone wanted to build up their connection points and they bought a system off us we could include many connection points as a thank-you.

VEXNEWS have always been negative to Fairfax for ideological reasons but their is truth in what they say here.

Most of us can see that something is wrong too as people we have known for years in Fairfax have suddenly gone.

The problem is much more than others such as News Corp mentioned here, Fairfax depends on advertising. Advertising for Fairfax is down and with these latest readership figures which apparently are the biggest drop ever since the Roy Morgan readership stats have been compiled their advertisers will be even less willing to pay for advertising. To the advertisers, it is simple if readership is 10% down then the advertising spot is worth 10% less.

Here I would argue that it is not just as Fairfax says the internet advertising is cheaper but that internet advertising is often better. We tried advertising for new staff in a Fairfax paper and got one response, on the internet using seek we got heaps.

Soon events in Fairfax could be very serious to newsagents.

http://www.roymorgan.com/news/press-releases/2009/879/

The lastest readership figures from Roy Morgan are available here. It is worth looking though to see what titles are being read now.

Seems like almost all readership of papers and magazines are down. This is disturbing as healthy readership figures encourage advertisers to pay for advertisements so helping keep the price of newspapers and magazines low.

This question will be answered this weekend with the latest promotion from News Limited on papermotion.

They are not giving much away to the public in their teaser-style advertisement here about the new technology of Papermotion that they are releasing in the Sunday Telegraph on Sunday.

Yesterday an email went from XchangeIT to many people. This email was withdrawn eleven minutes after being sent. That was long enough for many to get it. Those that got it emailed it out to many others. Almost immediately a competitor of ours publicly released it on his website so spreading it to everyone.

Now it feels like everyone has been calling us about it today.

What I can say is we are urgently seeking clarification on this email.

We are aware that it discusses important changes in the return system for almost every newsagent.

We are also aware that it directly affects POS DOS users.

As we prefer to be patient and accurate, rather than fast and inaccurate we are seeking clarification on many points on this email, we should have more information soon. Please wait.

One newsagent looking to upgrade to posbrowser asked me to look at his data to see what his magazine department looks like.

While discussing it, we decided that if a magazine sells about 20 in a shop. A delivery of 25 would be acceptable. However, a delivery of 40 would be unacceptable.

I imported his information of the first quarter of this year into posbrowser and processed it using a business rule, that an acceptable return rate was the greater of one or between 20 and 30% of expected sales.

So I made an excel chart,

I used nil are magazines that come into the shop and posbrowser based on history expects no sales. As you can see 41.6% of all magazines coming into the shop are expected to sell nothing. These did include a few new titles so it was exaggerated slightly but almost all were genuine. A typical example was BRITISH FOOTBALL WEEK. It was coming frequently and selling nothing. These magazines were uselessly labelled, paid for, put on the shelves, a while later they were taken off the shelf, processed as returns, electronically sent by XchangeIT and then physically sent back all at the newsagencies expense. In this newsagency, the worse offender for nil products was Gordon and Gotch with 46% and Network was the best with 33.7%.

Over are those the newsagencies are getting too many. As you can see about 23.8% of magazines are coming in higher amounts then the newsagency would like. RDS were the worst with almost 34.6% of its titles, Gordon and Gotch the best with 14.0%.

Okay were the magazines the newsagency thought got it right. That is 21.7%. Say five titles came in now, only one could be expected to be in a quantity that this newsagency wanted.

Unders were those magazines that posbrowser thought the newsagency did not get enough. About 13.4% of magazine titles, the newsagency needs more.

Clearly, with these figures, posbrowser could make an immediate improvement in his magazine department.

On May 17th the Sunday Telegraph is going to print an interactive digital Papermotion photograph.

These when you put such a picture in front of a computer with a webcam you can see moving pictures in 3D imagine “When they put the Melbourne Cup on the front page of the newspaper, you’ll be able ..to watch a video of the horse winning the race.”

Whether it has a long-term benefit, I am dubious. As one critic said if I want to look at a race, I can go through the video link on the newspaper on-line website why do I need the newspaper? I think he has a valid point.

Still, as a novelty item, I am sure it will have enormous interest as they have a good promotion with it. They are giving their readers a chance to win one of 50 webcams. I hope it quickly goes to other states too.

Clearly, newspapers are certainly not standing still with technology.

For Gordon and Gotch, if you manually invoice magazines on the computer and later intend to send or print return forms from the computer please make sure that you enter title and issue.

I was talking to them today. They told me that they have warned people time and again that “no code = no credit”.

So now they cannot credit a newsagent on a DOS site for some magazines as a result. What they stated was the little key punch girls in China cannot ‘make up’ issue codes -- so if they are blank -- they punch blank -- thus an invalid issue, so no credit.

We are now preparing to send a newsletter to our clients to explain how to setup Gordon and Gotch so this cannot happen again.

This morning several people rang me up to say that supermarkets are looking into EDI with newsagents.

I confess I was stunned about this but if my clients are interested then I must find out. So we rang up Coles and arranged for a meeting with their B2B group to discuss it.

To ask them were they discussing newsagents with anyone?

Answer was NO.

I then asked was it worth doing?

This needed a long answer which can be accurately summarized as NO.

The problem is the Coles B2B goes from a central buyer to six hundred supermarkets and many other shops such as Coles Express. So now EDI orders are sent from Cole’s central or regional office to a supplier who then delivers it to a picking location.

Currently all newsagents’ items are considered to being orders sent from a local supermarket. There is no facility for such local orders to be sent to the newsagent by EDI assuming the newsagent had access to this EDI gateway.

As Coles do not intend to change their systems in the next few years to handle local orders, so they do not see any use of a local newsagent being able use the Coles EDI systems.

A client rang me up today to ask me whether posbrowser can talk to the supermarkets in particular Coles. The answer is yes. Posbrowser has data links into many industry networks. Several of these networks have the ability of talking directly to Coles and Woolworths. The problem here is to find the best one for him.

I should warn everyone thinking about it that the Coles system does work differently in accounting to what you are used too. Using EDI you supply them with delivery document they turn it to an invoice and then they pay from that invoice. It can cause problems as you have to match your deliveries to their invoices.

If anyone is interested in doing this, please let me know.

I was asked to use our benchmarking project; to see what was happening with the current economy and its effect on newsagencies. This area is a region that has a high tourist trade. The study starts in 1997 and stops at the end of January 2009.

I asked if I could release the figures and was told that these would be okay. Here are our charts with my comments below.

<charts have been removed 19/11/2018>

Magazine sales they used to say were recession proof. If people were out of work, they still purchased them. Clearly this is no longer true.

No surprises here, as gambling has always been affected by the economy.

Papers sales were another said to be recession proof. If people were out of work, they still got them to find jobs. On-line sites have taken much of this away, so it is no longer recession proof.

Stationery sales now in newsagencies do appear to be recession proof. People need stationery. It does not depend much on tourist, little is purchased online plus newsagencies are competitive in price. Sales were stable during this period.

Tobacco, I took out a few shops here as some newsagents in the study told me that they were reducing this department.

I suppose if you are a smoker, you still need smokes. Interestingly here when the other departments went up, this one did not. Government policy will be the big problem here. Not everything can be put down to the economy.

When you look at the charts, you can see the impact of the global recession.

Recently several of our clients contacted me about getting our software changed so that magazine labels can be printed on a laser printer, as they feel it is cheaper; I, personally, am not so sure that it is cheaper. Still, since we always provide our users with choices, we are creating an update that will do this. The patch should be available in a few weeks.

My thoughts are that since barcode printers do not use ribbons, ink or toner they are cheaper to run. The labels have all the relevant
information on them. Barcode printers are easy and quick to use. You just put the labels in and away you go. Peeling them off is simple.

Let us look at laser printers.

Many of our users have used other systems that print using laser printed labels, so I asked them.

The biggest problem with laser printers is waste. Laser printers print on a whole page so they are not ideal for small batches of labels.

This struck me a few days ago when I met a newsagent using another system. An incredible number of perfectly good label sheets were in the rubbish bin.

I decided to write a simulation program on waste, the kind you could expect, assuming you print several runs a day. As you can see the waste is increasing dramatically! Total sheets are shown in red. Incomplete ones are shown in blue.

Clearly with laser printers you need to do a few print runs as possible per day because of the wastage rate increases dramatically.

Seeing the number of unused labels remaining on the scrap sheet I asked them why they didn’t reuse these perfectly good labels. They replied that they tried. However, first they had to estimate how many dummy labels they needed, then waste toner by printing a dummy batch and then print the labels they needed. It was messy. Also, the labels themselves would curl up inside the printer if the label sheet was reused.

I then asked why they were using an expensive label sheet. They replied that they could get cheaper sheets but were reluctant to use them as sometimes the labels leave traces of gum inside the laser printer causing it to jam. I too noticed this when I looked at the gum residue left behind by the more expensive label sheets.
The other problem was it was a bit of an art to getting the paper lined up correctly in the laser printer. If it is not correctly lined up it causes problems.

Although it did not concern them, I do know that laser printer manufacturers may void your warranty if something goes wrong because you put label sheets through the laser printer.

The laser labels are not as good. Not surprising, as a barcode printer is made for labels and can print finer details. See for yourself by checking the middle and the bottom labels.

Also, in newsagencies, labels need to endure rough treatment, rubbing and sunlight. Labels need to be read by people and by the barcode scanner. So I ran my fingernail several times over our laser printed label and our barcode printer label. See how the laser printed label on top smudged quickly? The barcode label printed below, despite even worse treatment, was unaffected.

Finally, laser printed labels darken faster with age. I noticed this particularly on the cookbooks.

If you look at this page, which I used in a previous blog for the running costs of a laser printer, you can see that it varies from 3.5 cents to 7.5 cents a page. The figures for labels are an underestimation as premium toner cartridge costs are much higher as they use more ink. Printing many pages of labels can be a very expensive exercise solely in terms of ink and toner costs.

Of course, no printer is perfect for all types of printing but a barcode printer should be used for small runs.

With Posbrowser you can use either a barcode printer or a laser printer or a combination.

The choice is yours with posbrowser.

We are sending out our new advertisement to newsagents in Australia. It is titled 6 easy steps to squeeze more profit.

It is always frustrating to me when I go into a newsagency and see so many held back because of bad software. That is why this advertisement was produced to show you that software can genuinely help you save.

That it can help you make better business decisions.

That it can increase sales.

The advertisement is released now.

I was talking to one of the magazine distributors today, when the subject came up of what we could do to help get more magazine sales in newsagencies. My suggestion was that magazine return periods should be reduced.

Now magazines are sent to newsagents and held there until the new issue arrives. The problem is that magazines have a very high sales decay rate. Almost all the sales are at the start of its selling life. After that, sales drop dramatically. Surely the best use of valuable shelf space would be to remove these magazines that sell badly and replace them with new magazines that will sell. This is particularly true now that many newsagents are cutting magazine space.

If this were done, newsagents would have a slightly higher return rate but they would be selling more.

What I do suggest to our clients is run a sales reports over the past few days to see what is selling now. A bad seller over the past few days will probably sell badly tomorrow. It should be replaced.