There is nothing in newsagencies that causes large legal cases as lotto does. I suppose no-one will go to court over a dollar paper but in lotto, millions are at stake.

For those not aware of this case. A person Mr Reinhold bought an Oz Lotto ticket at the Macarthur Newsagency at Campbelltown on September 19, 2005. Because of some problems the ticket did not print correctly so Mr Reinhold was given another ticket. Later the given ticket was cancelled under instructions from NSW lotto. As Murphy's Law would have it that cancelled ticket had the numbers for the $2 million jackpot. As it was cancelled Mr Reinhold could not collect his winning, so he went to court. Mr Reinhold won two million dollars.

Okay who is going to pay that $2 million dollars in allocating blame the NSW supreme court decided that since it was

"Lotteries that controlled the computer system and had the means of searching within it. The Newsagents could do nothing except give information to Lotteries and wait for Lotteries to give them a number to use as the TSN of the ticket to be cancelled. The shortcoming of the Newsagents was to fail to volunteer information that should have been volunteered. Nor, of course, was that information requested by Lotteries as it should have been."

In other words, the newsagency failed to volunteer the required information even though NSW lotto official did not ask for it, so the court has decided the newsagency must pay 10% of the two million dollars to Mr Reinhold plus interest. That sum now totals $ 246,011.14, the remaining amount NSW Lotto will have to pay.

The full decision is available here. It is worth a look for some unexpected risks you can come up in selling lotto however be warned it is 24 pages long.

Reinhold v New South Wales Lotteries Corporation [2008] NSWSC 5

Note whether the case is over remains to be seen but this is where is it now.

Several of our DOS clients in Victoria have already contacted us about the News Corp (HWT) automation requirements. Early we announced that we should have it completed by the end of the March, then after News Corp approves it hopefully we should be able to beta test it in some sites soon afterwards then we expect to roll it out between then and the end of June 2008. I am pleased to say we are on schedule.

The main problem we expect is with the roll out. The new system uses broadband. Nothing we can do about that as it is part of the requirements but unfortunately a lot of newsagents don't have broadband. Furthermore, some of those newsagents machines are really old. I don't know how we are going to get broadband going on a DOS machine. For those with old windows systems like 95 and 98, who can run broadband, I expect we are going to have trouble too. It is only with windows 2000 that we got a decent plug and play so I expect many of the newsagents systems are going to have to be updated or replaced. That alone will be causing problems.

Finally, over the years the DOS system has improved and changed dramatically for example in 2007 it went though 27 versions and 7 patches. Now many people will be jumping years in versions. They will need training just to do functions that they already use. For this reason now we are organizing user meetings and information sheets.

Overall we expect an eventful few months of work.

Our benchmarking although in early days is now just starts churning out data and we can see that soon we will have a global perspective of many newsagents. It will be an extremely powerful tool. It will be extremely exciting as it will be the first time ever newsagents have had the ability to do what majors can do now with benchmarking.

In magazines the critical issue has always been the range. There are just too many magazines in the system. Over the last few days I have been looking at computer reports trying to see about how we can help to automate the selection procedure.

But it is difficult to figure out what needs doing. So today I decided to check with other retailers. If they have done it why reinvent the wheel? So I booked a meeting in a few weeks with our benchmarking expert (Andrew) and me at Coles Myer to check out their systems. From what I understand they use consultant company software which they don’t know the formula. No doubt we will have to make our own formula but we need to know an overall sense of what is needed first before. Meanwhile I found out that one of my clients in a former life worked in that department at Coles Myer so I am going next week to be talking with him about how it worked.

So much time and effort is being spent on magazines now and the recent evidence is a real worry as it suggests that it is on a decline. This means that people will not be able to justify the work they put into it now. We have to get smarter here and automation is one important tool.

Yesterday and today we engaged with BrownTrout Publishers to get their catalog file correct. It is frustrating. These files are standard and used by many companies in the card industry now for many years and BrownTrout has produced them on numerous occasions yet each time for them it is new. There is always someone new doing it. Invariably they do about twenty attempts, then give up and then we do the task. It should not be like that as suppliers should have systems now that automate the process and so they should be able to send a catalogue file on demand.

Still it is necessary work as both of us realize as connecting the supplier and retailer through data sharing is now a necessity.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

While talking to a group of newsagents in a meeting yesterday, I noticed several did not know about Supanews.

It has 41 stores, a turnover of over $100 million a year, and is growing rapidly. It is innovative and owned by a huge company, A&R Whitcoulls, which has a group revenue of AUD 394.9 million. This group is also the biggest bookseller in Australia.

Supanews considers itself to be the most professional, successful and leading newsagency retailer in Australia.

It claims that it has newsagents worried and there is much truth in that although my meeting showed not everyone.

It is vital to the industry that this sales data gets to the magazine suppliers. In this day with the growing power of huge corporate companies, for example, Coles and online magazine websites more and more the newsagency industry has to prove itself to the magazine producers that it is a viable channel. So it is important is to get as many people as possible to send sales data though XchangeIt as if we can give them that an extra few percent let us do it particularly as it costs us nothing. The more people that send sales data the more valuable the sales data becomes.

Last year towards the end of the year, I contacted many people on behalf of Xchangeit to get this happening even to people that were not our clients. One guy, in particular, left a bad taste as he had time to write letters to complain publicly over his magazine orders but no wish to help to do something like send in his sales data. Overall it was neither easy nor pleasant but it is something the industry needed. That marketing campaign was extremely successful. So much so I have been asked to do another one as we need a 100% so I am going soon to start again a new campaign.

If you are not sending sales data and using Xchangeit we have an information sheet explaining how to set up sales history .

Today we had a few people ringing up why do they did not get their GG invoices funny enough even when they got the invoices. It took us most of the day before we figured out what was happening.

Xchangeit emailed us and a few others this morning that GG server was down this morning at 3:00am and the problem was being addressed. Since it only went to a restricted group and since it did state plainly the problem was being fixed, we assumed that it would not be known in Newsagency land so why broadcast it? Well this restricted email got out. Many people who read it did not read the whole email from Xchangeit and soon they started emailing other people that today’s GG invoices were not coming though even though they had. Those people they emailed got it second hand and many did not check their Xchangeit first so they rang. Soon the support lines here were flooded.

Although I been assured that this was a once-off-problem caused by GG moving offices, I think this example shows the present system is not satisfactory. There are just too many cases where the physical items are coming before the Xchangeit invoices. Xchangeit invoices need to be at our client’s site at least 24 hours before the goods physically arrive. This would give our clients a chance to process and be ready for the items when they came. It would also mean there would not be panic if they were sent late.

Anyway I have been told there are plans to set up a quality system to check on suppliers in the new version of Xchangeit. What I am going to complete in parallel system into our system too. The information is already there in our system what we needs is a report. This would give me the accurate data I need to explain the problem to Xchangeit rather then this anecdotal one.

The report would look something like this

Supplier Late invoices Late/Ontime_%
XYZ.............5..................0.02%
ABC.............7..................0.2%

Angus and Robertson bookshops and Supanews now together have Border’s 22 stores. So that is about 300 good stores. They also have large reserves of money as they are owned by Pacific Equity Partners who are huge.

Supanews have recently just purchased a newsagency in a major shopping centre Chadstone, they are good operators so I am sure that they will be doing a lot with it and soon I further suspect they will be acquiring a few more such newsagencies. This will mean a revolution in newsagencies from the inside as Supanews are good newsagents with buying muscle.

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&hl;=en&geocode;=&q;=345+Clayton+Road…

Where: CLAYTON NEWSAGENCY
345 Clayton Road Clayton 3168
Tel: (03) 9544 1153 - Simon Richards
Melway Ref: 79 C2 (Corner Dunstan St) and Google maps here

Date: Wednesday 5th March 2008
Commencing 5.30pm – onwards

Why : To assist existing Users to improve their knowledge and use of Browser and to demonstrate to potential new users the benefits of migrating to Browser.

Agenda:

Customer Deliveries

Adding customers
Deliveries
Statements
HWT Customer transfer file

Sub-Agents
Supply management
Return processing
Statements

Stock
Automatic ordering
GNS Connect Order File
Family & Class management
Stocktaking
Magazine stock control

Returns
Returning stock
XchangeIT electronic returns

Reporting
Most commonly used reports

Questions
General Posbrowser questions.

Please Note: This is a Posbrowser user meeting. DOS Questions will not be answered.

For further information telephone:
Simon Richards - details above
or
Michael Varger - Telephone: 0419 553 901
or Email: [email protected]

I expect that shortly we will a large number of support calls from clients on how they should handle the SMH price rise. To help explain it we have put together some information sheets and shortly we will sent out newsletters to our clients with information on how to handle it.

A client asked me to send her some subscriptions information sheets. The great beauty of the web for support is often I can do one job for many almost as quickly as for one. As one wants it, I am sure others will too.

So I will put up information on how to create a subscription in a customer order screen and another sheet showing an example of how to do it.

They are now in our subscription section.

Nielsen has just released their survey on New Zealand newspaper readership. The result of this survey is that newspapers readership is up by slightly over 1%. Unfortunately they don’t give the sales figure. Still considering the figures in Australia these results are excellent.

This is despite an active distribution of free newspapers. Obviously the worldwide trend to on-line newspapers is not worldwide.

However with magazines looking at the list the big sellers all are unfortunately down for example the NZ Woman's Weekly down 6.6%, New Zealand Woman's Day down 4.8% and TV Guide down 6.3%.

Much more then newspapers, newsagents must look at their magazines.

So we have received a number of support calls from clients on how they should handle it. To help explain it we have put together some information sheets and sent out newsletters to our clients with information on how to handle it.

This work, of course, is important but frustrating. Consider the problem from the newsagency industry say it is just 10 minutes a site to answer this question, that is 10 minutes wasted on one site now multiple it for more sites. One would imagine that some process should be put in place that could automate the whole process.

One such approach would be if newspaper suppliers adopted Xchangeit DDO standard for invoicing. They do not have to use the Xchangeit system just use email. Then our clients, when they imported in the invoices, would have among other benefits a system that could automatically update the price. As long as they import the invoices they would not have to worry about price rises.

The second approach that we are working on is an automatic scripting system. Using these we would be sent to our clients' scrips. If the clients' system allowed the scrips to function these could do updating of item prices but it could do much more such as stop a publication on a holiday, create bumper papers etc. The idea is that the program is as automated as possible. This is similar to what many software packages and some companies like 7-Eleven do now so their operator does as little such maintenance as possible.

What we want is to speed up the back office work while assuring pricing accuracy!

Like everyone in the newsagency industry, I went to look at the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures.

Of course, the main one that interests me is the newspapers, and the same patterns I reported earlier on a previous ABC audit showed up again. The national newspapers did increase in circulation, but the overall rate of fall in newspaper circulation is less than almost everywhere else in the Western world, and magazines are a real source of concern.

The results show an overall loss of about 1% in newspaper circulation for the last quarter of 2007 (October to December). Of concern is that this period included a federal election, which should have increased sales. So, like before, the newspaper market appears to be static.

Looking at them individually, it appeared that many News Limited publications took a hammering, although others like The West Australian also went down. That, of course, is more of an issue to the publishers, not us.

mX a free newspaper is now offering advertisers scented choices from today so they can have a newspaper that smell for example like roses. That is something different.

The mX newspaper is a free newspaper owned by News Limited given out throughout main CBD locations in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. If News Limited introduces this technology throughout its other publications, imagine what it would be like in a newsagency! Roses I can take but what if they made it smell like mint toothpaste?

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have allowed A&R; Whitcoulls Group Holdings to buy Borders bookshop in Australia. The decision is here {link removed}

A&R; Whitcoulls Group (ARW) is a huge company who among other concerns owns Angus & Robertson and the Supanews chain of newsagencies. They currently have the largest market share in books in Australia. In total, they may also already have the largest market share in magazines too although their market share of magazines would be much smaller than books. I suspect soon this decision will have dramatic consequences to the newsagency industry if only because I remember an early attempt by A&R; Whitcoulls to use their market muscle to demand bigger margins from suppliers. If you don't remember this read here.

For those of you that sell books, I thought that this comment by the ACCC was interesting.

The ACCC's inquiries confirmed that Angus & Robertson currently prices many of its books above recommended retail price. The ACCC was concerned that Angus & Robertson would attempt to roll out this policy in Borders post-acquisition. However, the ACCC noted that Borders has also recently implemented a policy of selling some books at prices above RRP anyway. Further, as customer and retailer awareness of backlist pricing grows, other book retailers will be in a position to highlight their lower prices and win customers from Borders and Angus & Robertson if they attempt to increase prices further,"

These electronic downloads are saving our clients much time. That is why we are currently working with several other suppliers to get more of these electronic downloads.

If you require Simson please use

For this and other supplier files please visit here

Not the one that Simson is sending. As we have just finished testing Simson under the current card standard and it is fine. So you should have no problem importing this file.

The Magazine Publishers of Australia (MPA) have put together a great on-line site about magazines for advertising agencies and marketers. It has some great features for newsagents thinking about doing category analysis on their products.

One tip I can give you is when you talk to magazine producers they are always talking demographics and magazine categories, so keep that in mind while using this screen. The logic here is for an advertiser of a product, not a newsagent. Having said that they have made it easy for you on this screen to put in the various population segments and then you to study what types of magazines should go well in your area. Then it is up to you to see why they are different.

Having said that I doubt there will be any surprises to anyone as the best magazine buyers are young, socially aware, big spending, and intelligent women from families with good incomes. I suppose the question now becomes is your shop the place where these women would want to shop for magazines?

http://news.google.com.au/

On-line newspapers are about to get better still! There are now trialling local versions of their News service for Australia.

You can check out here the beta version of the Australian version of Google News Australia

But clearly this is going to be another threat to our main product the printed newspapers.

Still it will probably only have some affect as studies still show the main stumbling block on-line papers is that it is much more comfortable for a person to read a printed newspaper then one on-line. The problem is that it is getting more convenient and easy to get one on-line.

http://www.newstobusiness.com/

Brendan Geyer is a successful newsagent who decided to make what has become a successful consultancy business specializing in the newsagency industry.

This is a new clip by him on how to display newspapers.

[youtube]S4NJf7J2MtY[/youtube]