[link removed]

After Bill Express went down, I spoke to the administrator about buying some of the software assets of Bill Express. They were nice enough, but clearly were hiding something and told me I would just have to wait. They did not tell me 7-Eleven had wrapped it up already. You can read about it here.

Now, say 7-Eleven were to buy the assets of Bill Express; they stated that they are interested in restarting the network of 14,000 terminals across the country. If so, that could be good news for newsagents. Technically there was nothing wrong with Bill Express bill payment. It was the leases people were complaining about. Plus, towards the end, Bill Express talked about introducing some good products into the mix. If these projects continue, it will make Bill Express systems even better.

One big problem now is who owns the terminals. If the terminals are out, that could be even better news for our clients as we do not need the terminals. We can do it through the software on the computer.

I certainly have no problem with another player in the Bill Payment system in competition for newsagents business.

Yesterday was the last day of the show and here below, are some scenes from the show from our stall.

My first impressions were the show numbers were about the same as last year. Then that many suppliers did not show up such as Fairfax and the magazine companies.

The stall holders had fewer items that were fascinating but not relevant, like the Staedtler who last year set up an old factory like it was about 500 years ago where they made pencils like they used too. Now they just concentrated on product. I could see the show deals offered were better than last year. It probably worked as several stall holders reported the orders were up on last year.

To a supplier like us, the costs of coming are considerable. As about half the people are already our clients, we came out with support staff to help them. Of course, what we are hoping for is a few of the other half comes into our stall. So like any other supplier, we came armed with a few show deals to attract them. It will be much later though before we know whether for us enough of these came though for the show to pay its way. Still it was pleasing that our stand was always full and we had people in the corridors waiting to get into the stall. For the number of people, we needed a bigger stand.

Although my presence was not required, as Phil and Garth did such a good job. Still, I like to come to meet my clients. If they have an issue, I think they also appreciate that the director of the company is there and available to talk to them.

GNS Market Fair is the trade show for the newsagency industry. It is open this weekend.

Last year our stand was packed, here was the scene with people packed in the corridor queuing up waiting to see us.

I think it will be bigger this year as we will display some of our advanced technologies. To help us, we will have outside experts there on integrated bill pays, EFTpos and security systems as well as some of our programmers.

The show is at the
Mooney Valley Racecourse
MacPherson Street
Mooney Ponds

Melway reference: 29 A7

Saturday 10th August 9:00 am—5:00 pm
And
Sunday 11th August 10:00 am—4:00 pm

We are on Stand 3!

If you have any support issues or just want to hello or you just want to see the top selling program in the newsagency market posbrowser, we would love to see you.

We hope to see many of you at the GNS Market Fair.

Since Bill Express collapsed, I can see people involved in the newsagency industry alarmed. They see a witch-hunt directed at them. I think they are right. Yes some made stupid choices but that is not criminal. One person, in particular annoys me. Now he is so loud and smart but what was he doing before Bill Express went bad when he is accusing them of acting so badly? There is an old Roman saying Caveat emptor "Let the buyer beware." He voluntarily went in like so many others no-one forced him into it. Where was his due diligence? At least he is a wealthy person he can afford it, many that went on this path too cannot.

If anything comes out of this, remember we have to do our own due diligence. Now when someone sees me with a proposal I now ask them “If were involved and later someone wants out, what happens then?” If the answer is there will be a problem, I am reluctant to continue.

Remember there are always proposals and ventures that fail even those that are sure things.

I am pleased how much we have done this year in pushing electronic invoicing in the newsagency industry. Over the period, we have activated many newsagents suppliers for electronic invoicing. None of them is a routine or easy task. Each had its own problems.

Much of it is because the DDO is a complex file to produce. To produce it, requires a programmer. Also it has so much in it, checking it is a big job. So many suppliers see it is a big expense.

Over the past few months, we have been working with a newsagency supplier Axiom to get them going in electronic invoicing using Xchangeit files. Yesterday we succeeded in fixing the problems. It now imports.

Now all newsagents, not just our clients can have electronic invoices from Axiom. It will save Axiom's clients time and help them manage their stock better.

Yesterday I went to look at the Gift fair in Jeff's shed. As always, it is huge with an extensive range of goods.

Over many years, I have come to know many stall holders as they are active in newsagencies. They reported that fewer regular newsagents were coming then last year and they were ordering little. The new ones, one said to me in frustration were sightseers not buyers! I think they did it to themselves, as the minimum orders are higher this year than last year. Most stalls are now asking for an opening order COD of about $300 although some are asking for a $1,000. As retail margins are about 50%, if you buy at three or four stalls a buyer would now have almost $4,000 retail of gifts to sell. Which is a lot for giftware to sell, if you are starting out particularly as it is takes a lot of room in the shop.

Other than that it is the same trends, I reported last year.

There was even less this year than last year of new and innovative products.

Most of my clients have quality shops so they want quality branded items. Almost all the items offered at the show is cheap and looked low quality with no brand. It is the stuff that does well in a high class $2 shop.

Also surprisingly, although Christmas is coming up, little was there for it and what was there was not that good.

Yet there were some interesting products if you looked that would go well in newsagencies. For example in one stall had a great range of papers and photo albums from India and several had interesting and expensive looking dinner napkins and tissues.

However what was immediately obvious was the high standard of computers and equipment used in many stalls. Almost every stall, had a laptop computer. They were using them too as you could see from discussions with their clients who were asking detailed questions on previous orders. Also the salesmen were often walking about with sophisticated PDAs, remotely linked to these laptops. Newsagency supplier's at fairs should learn from this!

It is almost official what people have been saying. See here. The switch from Lotto to Intralot in Victoria is not going well at all. I think this is partly because of consumer resistance to the switch, although the late delivery of the units to many sites, which resulted in inadequate preparation, did not help either.

Just a month after it opened for business in Victoria, leaked figures reveal sales for the Greek gambling company are running at about $1 million a week, way down on forecast estimates of $5.4 million.

As people are not buying Lotto to compensate, I estimate this is costing Intralot's agents just under $400,000 weekly in lost commissions, over $1,700 in profit each. Many agents will not be able to afford that! While the Victorian government is possibly losing a million dollars a week in taxation

It has now been several weeks since News limited deadline for newsagent automation compliance relating to the transfer of home delivery data has passed. Although willing, unfortunately a few agents still aren’t quite there.

As we being notified by News Limited of a site with problems, we are ringing our users to get them online.

We are working with them now to get a new product file for electronic importing. They are finalising it now.

Years ago, I remember one newsagent in Middle Brighton started importing goods direct from China for his shop. He wanted something with a decent margin. Once word got around, other newsagent started buying with him. Over the years, Sedlif has grown in the newsagency industry.

If you are going to the Melbourne Gift Fair at the Melbourne Showgrounds 2nd - 6th August this week, say hello at the SEDLIF stand A2001 and tell them that you are a POS Solution's client for a better deal.

Dear Newsagent

SEDLIF prides itself on working with Newsagents to deliver products with margins.

Our website has Clearance Lines, Monthly Specials and General Goods ranging from Bags, Balls, Toys, Sporting goods, Stationery, Storage Cubes, Children’s Desks and Novelty items. With these products we have supplied various retail businesses, including Newsagents, Howards Storage World Franchises as well as other wholesalers like GNS.

Our buying contact has his own business, based in China, and has been involved in buying and exporting for over 4 years. With his experience we are buying the right quality products at the right price to ensure you can get a minimum 100% mark up on all products and up to 200% or more on Clearance line and Monthly specials.

We are a member of GHA and will be showing all our products at the Melbourne Gift Fair at the Showgrounds, in the Avenue Pavilion, booth A2001 from the 2nd August to the 6th August. Here you can view our range and place orders otherwise you can visit our showroom at any time in Sandringham or we can arrange a time to come out and see you with samples. Any initial orders over $100.00 will be freight free in the Melbourne Metro Area or the order can be picked up from Sandringham.

Grant Bruce from Brandon Park Newsagency, in Melbourne, sold over 350 of our Wooden Puzzles in 2 weeks at 100% Mark Up. We also have one Newsagent, in Queensland, that we work with, who imports containers of these products, just for himself to sell in his own shop.

On the SEDLIF website, you can place orders or if you prefer you can download brochures and order forms under the tab Orders once you have created an account, which is very easy. You can also view the prices of the Clearance Lines and Monthly Specials without logging in.

Another part of our business, which is growing, is to source specific products that you, the customer, requires. You can contact us with the type of products you are after and we can get a quote for you. Most items only require small minimums of a carton, so it is an easy way to boost your Gross Profit. As this is a quote there is no obligation to purchase so it is worth while sending us through some products to source so you can see what margins you can actual make. As SEDLIF is not holding stock only a small fee is charged for this service, if the order is purchased.

Thank you and we hope you like the products as much as we do.

Regards

Cameron Fildes

Factory 16, 91 Tulip Street
Sandringham Vic 3191
Phone: (03) 9585 5182
e-mail: [email protected]
 

Here is an interesting article on the status of the “hell or high water” contracts that newsagents though Bill Express have with Mobius Financial Services. Apparently the potential value of these totals about $15 million.

I noticed that Allco, the owners of Mobius have not released an ASX announcement about it probably as it does not affect them, as this potential loss will be worn by many of the bond holders of Mobius not them.

A few people asked me if there was anything for the average newsagent there. I doubt it as the focus was on petrol, drinks, lollies etc.

There were however a couple of the presentations that were worthwhile as there are some similar issues that do face both newsagents and convenience stores.

Regards,
Phil
National Support Manager
POS Solutions Australia Pty Ltd

I was challenged yesterday by one newspaper supplier over my conclusion here that many of the problems with subagents relate to small orders.

To a newspaper publisher, a sellout means that a potential customer for a newspaper, may not get a paper.

So I ran posbrowser using our benchmarking data to compare the subagent order size with the sellout rate. The overall return rates were about the same.

Here is my results for newspapers

Number of Orders...Size of order...sellout rate%
----------------------------------------------
371...................1-2...............37.74%
202...................3-4...............25.74%
271...................5-10..............23.25%
196..................11-20..............28.06%
328..................21-50..............18.29%
359...................51+...............15.04%

Explanation: The first column is the number of orders considered. The next column is the number of papers on the order. The last column was the rate that no returns occurred - sellouts.

So in the first line, I compared 371 orders with one or two papers. Of these 37.74% had no returns. Similarly the second line out of 202 orders of three to four papers, 25.74% had no returns. And so on.

As you can see, it is the smaller orders that are more likely to sellout.

Just to update you on our Dialtime/Billexpress replacement.

I now use a combination of Tyro, E-pay and iinet internet Naked service to replace the whole set-up. Tyro's performance is good, and the new setup can save some money. The Naked service includes all local/national call free and phone line charges. It starts with a $49.95 plan (residential, but I don't care even if you use it inside a business location). I am using the $79.95/month. I just transferred the line using Dialtime to them, and it is $79.95, including the line charges/30G+30G data on ADSL2+ (my lines are running at least 18mbps or above), and unlimited local/national phone calls free, 29 cents/min for phone calls to mobile.

Tyro give us over 10M plan and E-pay commission is the same as Dialtime.

We have saved some money and the performance is far better than before.

Thanks and best regards

Mr To
HORNSBY NEWSAGENCY
SHOP 3008, WESTFIELD SHOPPINGTOWN
HORNSBY NSW 2077
Tel (02) 9476 3208

This exhibition, they do every few years. I go to it whenever it is in Melbourne because we have several clients that do have successful convenience stores and newsagencies. Furthermore several of our newsagent’s clients, have been talking to me about convenience store products as they are looking to expand. If you are interested, let us know and Zac or I can give you some people to call.

Once in the show, I was stunned to see one of my competitors in a small stand trying to sell into this market. Maybe that is why they have been quiet with newsagencies recently as obviously their emphasis has been elsewhere. Their boss was not there so I could have a pleasant talk to them. I wished them the best in this field. In truth, I hope it does so well for them that they stop annoying me completely. But they will have major problems if they want to do well in this industry. The chief one is petrol and the second are the big players in this industry. They gave us the specifications. It was a huge amount of work. They have their own XchangeIT, their own rules, their own reporting requirements etc! These are of zero benefits to our core industry, newsagents so we decided to drop BP and that industry.

Part of the problem is once a newsagent gets a good taste of food they give up on the newsagency products. For example, I was talking in NSW to a newsagent who bought a service station, a few years ago with a small supermarket. He moved the newsagency in saving on rent. Soon he discovered food so he started to give it more territory. The petrol although a great drawcard was not so profitable but he found it necessary and extremely labour intensive. As newsagency products demand much knowledge and training with the owner losing interest plus the staff not having time, the need or desire to learn saw the newsagency products slowly declined.

Still I was interested in walking around and see what was there. I did notice plenty of coffee machines. Years ago, we arranged a group deal for coffee machines for our clients. The margins are brilliant. If you have the room for it and a large magazine section, it can be good. Obviously from the number at the show, there is a big demand for such machines. Maybe we should look into another group deal?

Then I went looking at the computer software and security equipment to see if there was anything new in the C-store computer and security industry. I found little new for example PDAs, Quickbook integration, the computerized linked security systems all items we have already. Furthermore, I think the newsagency systems are better. Although some of the automatic linking of signage pricing to computers looked exciting. Clearly are going to have to look at this again.

Several very minor newsagent suppliers were there too. However none of the major suppliers, for example, no newspapers, magazine, stationery, lotto or card suppliers which confirms that these product and lines have little to offer newsagents in their core lines. It is only interesting if you want to expand into new fields. If so, entry is free tomorrow, unfortunately, the talks are full, so you cannot go and hear them.

On the 10th of July the Melbourne Trading Post went up in price. Normally we would create an information sheet, to help our clients with the price rise. We did not!

Why not you might ask, well it because no-one in the Trading Post this time decided to notify us? They did last time but not this time. Please if you talk to the suppliers of the Trading Post, let them know this?

We have been looking at subagents, comparing orders and returns for papers and magazines using our benchmarking project.

Our conclusion after examining 736 magazine and 2903 newspaper orders over a month, is clearly the subagent channel is controlling newspapers better than magazines.

I feel it is because newsagents are sending out more newspapers for each order than magazines. In our sample, an average subagent order for a newspaper was 26 copies while the average order for a magazine was about 3.7. If you supply someone 26, it is a much easier decision to make the order one more which might increase the return rate to 1/26 x 100% = 3% than to change an order from 3 to 4. The latter might change the return rate 1/3 x 100% = 33%.

This lower supply number also is reflected in the sell-out rate of magazines. In the sample, almost 40% of magazine orders have no returns compared to 30% of newspapers' orders. Still it is not a good result, as it means that many subagents are running out of stock so backing up my early results, there is a problem in subagents' supply.

Usually it is the subagent that asks for extras so it was interesting to see how our subagents were looking after newspapers compared to magazines. A newspaper that sold out was twice as likely as a magazine to be sent as an extra. This was not unexpected as a weekly magazine, a few days-old that runs out will not attract a subagent's attention but daily newspaper running out will.

Probably trying to compensate for this, newsagents are oversupplying magazines' orders. You can see magazines have a much higher return rates in percentage terms than newspapers.

Clearly magazine companies should look again, at their return policy of 7%. Although increasing orders for magazine orders to subagents will result in dramatic increases in returns, yet this policy from our benchmark study it is costing in subagents' magazine sales dramatically much more then newspapers.

On the 26th of July both the Saturday Melbourne Age and the Herald Sun are going up in price. Information sheets are going out now on how to handle these price rises.

I would like to thank the Age circulation department in particular because they took us into their confidence and kept us informed long before it happened. As a result, our clients have plenty of warning.

Another one of our clients in South Australia has put together using our software a nice shopify website.

There are some interesting points in this article here.

Despite what some people said, the rumours of the debt owing were accurate. The administrator said that Bill Express owes ANZ $53 million and the biggest telcos another $110 million. Overall he states the total is over $250 million without the newsagents' claim. Clearly the administrator is not accepting the newsagents’ claim yet, only that it exists.

Not that it matters as there is nothing in the Bill Express's kitty to pay the $250 million much less the newsagents. Now there is a new debt, the administrator who charges $580 an hour! Since they are paid in full first, I guarantee that they will be clocking up many hours.