This version we have on the net is the longest version of the DOS system we had this year. It lasted almost a month. This year it was the only version to get out of beta.

There will be an update to the DOS system coming out this Tuesday. It is being released for a site that needs some special drivers for a printer.

For the public, it has some nice features too.

It will now update the Gordan and Gotch return weeks automatically to the calendar. So you will no longer need to remember to update the return week to the calendar manually every year.

Also it will be able to handle in subagents an edition of newspapers that has a different retail to return price.

We had a discussions today with them with the continuing saga over their latest data file. After review, we decided that what we have is correct.

I was please when they told us how impressed they were with our efficiency.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

I have been going though a client's data. What I can see while entering the dates, they have been inconsistent.

You should not use
08/08 for some entries and
08 AUG for another lot.

Always try to follow the same. What I suggest if the number is first it should refers to the day if the number is last it refers to year.

So for the 8th of August use
08 AUG

While
AUG 08 - would mean August 2008

We had a few discussions with them over their latest data file. I have checked it again last night and what we have looks right.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

In posbrowser use standard import.

I looked in the newsagency-benchmarking project to see British Tobacco products. They have been falling dramatically. I then checked a tobacconist shop just to confirm and they are down 40% more then the average. Clearly, the public are reducing smoking. It must be a worry to many of our clients who need tobacco for example in Tasmania.

In addition, sales are falling in dramatic steps as newsagencies are moving out of cigarettes. In this publicity photo of a site at recent posbrowser, install in Victoria. Look at the background, behind the happy newsagents. You can see the space dedicated to tobacco products is tiny. The inkjets have taken over that space.

The top three sellers now in British tobacco in newsagencies are

HORIZON 50 BLUE
WINFIELD 25 S BLUE
WINFIELD 25 S GOLD

James and I are at the end of day 3 of our trip around western NSW. Over the last 3 days, we have seen almost 20 clients, and I must say, we have had a very positive response so far! Many of our clients still on POS DOS tell me that they love their DOS system, and would love to keep it forever! So much for dos is dead! As for our clients on PosBrowser, we have taken some very positive feedback from a lot of them, and will be relaying this to everyone once we get back. We have heard some great ideas for updates, and suggestions for the future. So far we have visited Lithgow, Bathurst, Kelso, Orange, Dubbo, Wellington and Gunnedah. Tomorrow we hit Tamworth, and then on to Scone and Muswellbrook and hopefully Singleton. I will keep everyone informed as we go.

Thanks a lot,

Garth Brennan
Mobile: 0409 425 979

This is an excellent article in the Australian Financial Review about what the Big Retailers Coles, David Jones and Woolworths are now planning or have implemented their own premium cards.

These retailers have the scale to achieve by themselves a dramatic shift in the market. The big banks love it because by driving consumers into these corporate cards they get a premium fee. Who pays those higher premium fees? The answer is YOU the retailer. I blogged about it earlier.

Here is how it works. I as a consumer get a BP CITIBANK premium card because BP gives me 5% off. Not a bad deal for me, the consumer. However, when I use this card at a newsagency because it is a premium card, the credit rate charged to the newsagent is much higher.

In some newsagencies about 40% of their turnover now is in cards and with these premium cards growing at a rapid rate, these fees are going to become a major expense.

It does make the Tyro offer look better probably as they are not the issuer of these cards so they do not have this interest like the big banks, in pushing these cards. I can see that one of our rivals is now following us again on Tyro as well. Good for him too, as much of these big organisations loyalty programs are being funded now though premium cards by smaller retailers.

For many of my clients in Victoria, Tasmania, Northern Territory, ACT and though Golden Casket in Queensland Tattersall is very important.

What is good about following a public company is that they have to release their information. Clearly, Tattersall has not had a good year. I am glad I did not own any shares in them.

Unfortunately, like so many companies in the ASX, these report seems to be incomplete. For example, no mention of the growing competition from online gaming is barely mentioned. Now in the Northern Territory bookies, are turning over billions of dollars much of it I am sure is at their expense.

Also, they have so many interests that what we want in the report is buried in other figures. Considering Tattersall's importance to the industry, it is strange that an organisation like the ANF does not hire an analysist to go over these figures for us. I can assure you that Tattersall's do studies of newsagents. Like many large newsagent suppliers, they know more about newsagents than newsagents know about them. That is a big no in business.

From the report, you can see that Tattersall has suffered a huge loss to their business in Victoria and clearly they could lose more there. The move to Queensland looks like it has worked for them. I am not surprised as I know from my meetings with them, that they are good operators.

What also helped them this year was an amazing series of luck that gave them many jackpots!

Although we have no breakdown by state in the report, newsagency products have increased by 5%. Which in today's retail market is a good result? Unfortunately for us, it is unclear whether this increase was because of the large growth in Tattersall's outlets this year or because of an increase in existing shop sales.

It shows our benchmarking project importance because without it, no-one will tell you how products are moving in newsagencies. I will do an analysis of how scratchies tickets have gone in different states over the last few quarters.

If you want to join the benchmarking project and get a regular analysis of your shop please contact Nextra or our benchmarking officer Andrew Lloyd on Ph:(03) 9597-7222

One person was a bit too keen to jump into the 21st century with on-line returns. We are talking to GG now trying to fix him up. What happened is because he was doing all the right steps he assumed that GG was accepting the on-line returns. Since GG had not approved him, what they did was accept the forms but not issue any credits.

What GG want I think is reasonable. They want you to run for a few weeks both on-line and sending in the forms until they can see that it is running smoothly. This is a good idea for you too. I have yet to see anyone get into trouble by being careful.

However, if you need to check with GG, the officer in charge there is

Liz Morrison
Returns Processing Supervisor
Gordon & Gotch
(02) 9972 8890

I find her very helpful.

We have been speaking to them whether their products will suffer any disruption because of the strike?

They told us the products should be there but do not be surprised if it is late.

I knew from the start that this one was difficult. Diaries are a small section in most shops, with an extensive range of products that experience major sales swings over the year. All this makes a benchmark analysis difficult.

I could see once I started that unlike my previous example were I showed the top ten last month in inkjets all remained in the top ten this month, this was not true of Debden. Not one in last month's top ten remained this month. These products are jumping all over the scale.

Then when I did an analysis of different shops, I got a different result. It is not stable across shops either.

What you are looking for in benchmarking is something stable. In a department a supplier, a ranking in the shop a comparsion with other shops just something. I did not see it here.

Having said all the current top sellers in newsagencies now in Debden are but none are significant sellers.

FINANCIAL DEBDEN QTO 1DTP
2008 FASHION LADY'S WALLET POCKET
FINANCIAL DEBDEN CLASSIC WTO

Having said that this data is probably too late to help anyone. Nothing I can do, next month I am sure that it will be different again.

After the success of the recent Market Fairs in the East, we have booked a stand for the GNS Market Show in WA. We have just expanded our staff in WA and it will be a good way for them to introduce themselves to our clients in WA. We hope to see many of our clients there.

We were busy, especially on Sunday afternoon. So much that I almost lost my voice from talking to existing and potential clients. Pleasingly we had many enquiries from people with other systems or no system. I confess I am surprised how many newsagents still do not have systems.

Overall the feeling among our existing clients was positive; they complimented us on our support and service. Many are keen to organize one of our free user meetings at their shop!

Almost everyone we spoke to was excited about the TYRO and E-Pay integration, and the prospect of cancelling one of their phone lines in their shops!

Regards

Garth

This GNS Market Fair is now on. This is the trade show for industry suppliers to exhibit to Newsagents. In the past, it has proven to be an exciting and popular event in Sydney.

Here was a scene at the Melbourne GNS Market Show just held as you can see it was packed.

I am sure that Garth will do a similarly outstanding job at presenting some of our advanced technologies to you there including integrated bill pays, EFTpos and security systems.

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

Where
Dome, Dome Theatrette ,Pearson Room ,Somerville Room

For information on how to get there please click here

Dates & times:
Saturday 23rd August 2008, 9.00am - 5.00pm
Sunday 24th August 2008, 9.00am - 5.00pm

A couple of people rang up today about importing a Debden stock file.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

Inkjet cartridges have in the last few years recorded an impressive growth in newsagencies. Pleasingly there is an increasing customer acceptance for newsagencies in this market. So it was no wonder I was asked to look at benchmarking sales of inkjets in newsagencies.

Immediately I could see it is a good market for newsagents as few products would rival inkjets in a newsagency. It does have a similar problem for benchmarking that I noted in my previous blog on benchmarking pens. Cannon outsells HP but HP has a better margin.

Surprisingly for a market that is high tech and fast changing, the products are stable. Out of the top ten last month all remained in the top ten this month. Also good was this top ten comprised a fair share of this market 30.37%.

What also I did see was interesting was that compatibles only comprised about 10.44% of this market! Here as in other products, the public clearly see newsagents as a supplier of quality items. The genuine products are the big sellers. I do not see that much for brother inkjets.

The top three sellers in inkjets now in newsagencies are all from Tonnex.

CANON GENUINE PG-40 BLACK
CANON PGI-5 BLK INK CARTRIDGE
HP GENUINE #21/22 COMBO

Today we have just finished preparing the latest electronic download of Artwrap for August. This one is huge and has over 4000 items.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

Yesterday I received a question to benchmark pens sold in newsagencies now.

The problem is because of a lack of an industry wide category analysis system, trying to match the relevant product lines is difficult because a computer needs a formula to find an item. So in this case, how does the computer decide that a product ABC item is a pen and product CDE is not!

What I did do is search though the description and hope that all items that are pens are so labelled in the product description.

When I did this, I could see immediately to a newsagent a problem is that the top ten sellers in this category make up only 18.45% of the sales. Clearly to adequately service this category, you need a wide range of products.

Now what we have to decide is what is a better product? Say product ABC above sells 20 and makes the newsagent $30.00 a week and item CDE sells 5 a week and makes the newsagent $42.00 profit. To overcome that, we have modified a system that network used for magazines in their benchmarking project with us. The exact details of how this score is determined is confidential.

Having said all of this, at the moment in newsagencies the top three selling pens are

By score

PEN BIC 4 COLOUR
PEN ARTLINE 200 0.4 BLACK
PEN 60C ASSTD STEAD/KILO

By quantity

PEN 60C ASSTD STEAD/KILO
PEN BIC CRYSTAL MEDIUM BALL PENS BLUE
PEN ARTLINE 200 0.4 BLACK

By turnover

PEN BIC 4 COLOUR
PEN ARTLINE 200 0.4 BLACK
PEN PAPERMATE ROLLERBALL BLACK 0.7

A new readership survey was released on August 15, 2008 by Roy Morgan Research. This is the most influential survey on newspaper and magazine readership in Australia used particularly by advertisers.

The same trends that I blogged last time are still there

Daily newspapers are slightly up although the figures from Hobart and South Australia look disturbing.

Change%...Publication
+0.9%.....Herald Sun Victoria/Melbourne
-1.6%.....Daily Telegraph New South Wales/Sydney
+6.8%.....Sydney Morning Herald New South Wales/Sydney
+0.4%.....The Age Victoria/Melbourne
+5.2%.....Courier Mail Queensland/Brisbane
+1.0%.....West Australian West Australia/Perth
-10.8%....Adelaide Advertiser South Australia/Adelaide
+4.9%.....The Australian National
+1.6%.....Australian Financial Review National
-15.6%....Hobart Mercury Tasmania/Hobart
-------------------------------------------------
+0.6%.....Overall.

Sunday newspapers are down
Weekly magazines are down
Monthly magazines are about the same

As we stated at the recent Nextra conference where we displayed our benchmarking data, how limited the ABC-audited magazines' figures are to newsagents.

In the ABC list for the period from January to March 2008.

From this, here is their list of the top ten magazines

Rank...........Description
1..............Australian Women's Weekly
2.............*Woman's Day
3............ *New Idea
4............. Reader's Digest
5..............Better Homes & Gardens
6..............That's Life!
7...............Super Food Ideas
8...............*Take
9...............*TV Week
10..............Cosmopolitan

Yet from our benchmark studies, these are the top ten magazines selling in newsagencies from January to March 2008.

Rank.........Description
1............WOMAN'S DAY
2.............NEW IDEA
3.............THAT'S LIFE(N)
4.............TAKE 5
5..............NW
6..............OK WEEKLY(N/A)
7.............TV WEEK METRO
8.............SELECT NRL CARDS
9.............WHO
10...........ZOO WEEKLY N/A

As you can see, it looks different. It does not even start the same and the further you go down the list, the more different they look.

Also, note how number 8 SELECT NRL CARDS shows that this analysis for magazines in a newsagency should be by state and how items can be missed. SELECT NRL CARDS is a major seller in newsagencies for Network Services, yet if you depended on the ABC list you would miss it as it is not a magazine.

Newsagents now can get better figures then the ABC figures.