A newsagent asked that I look at Lovatts publications. He felt what the industry was saying, he was not getting. Was he doing something wrong?
According to the Wikipedia article here. {link removed}
Lovatts Publications… has developed into Australia's leading crossword and puzzle publishing company, with a range of 20 crossword and puzzle titles, 12 in the top 10% of magazines sales.
The problem I have in doing a benchmark on this section is that it is difficult for me to know which are Lovatts magazines. So I use a simple rule, if in the title it has Lovatt in it, it is one.
I then took a benchmark of all the magazines sold in newsagents from the three major suppliers YTD. Weeded out a few and got 4617 publications. So my top 10% would be 462 publications. In that list, Lovatts got 15.
So they are selling better in newsagencies, than elsewhere or they are underestimated in the industry. This maybe as this organisation is active in the newsagency industry. I know I have spoken to them a few times and it has always been positive. They run good promotions. They have their own newsagency ordering system which has bought their returns down so saving newsagents’ cash flow dramatically. Because of this, newsagents do promote Lovatts.
Looking at the percentage clearly they are in total, a minor section with 1% of the total. My concerns started when I looked at the comparison with last year YTD figure when they were 1.4% of the total. That is a huge drop in such a small section.
The trend on my observations for Lovatts does not look good
YTD...............8.40% of NDD DISTRIBUTION products and 1.03% overall.
Last YTD.....10.74% of NDD DISTRIBUTION products and 1.44% overall
Quarter..................7.41% of NDD DISTRIBUTION
Last Quarter...........8.54%
My first thought was maybe this shift from NDD doing the orders has not proved effective. Maybe we are seeing the effect of undersupply. NDD have after all access to more information than Lovatts do. Sometimes it is better to piggy back on someone else rather then do it yourself. Or maybe the internet and publications expanding their puzzle section is having a long-term affect. I cannot say. All I can report what our own benchmark figures are saying.
Still I suggest that newsagents look into their magazine sales reports and make their own conclusions how it is going.
The top three sellers in this section are
LOVATTS COLOSSUS CROSSWORDS
LOVATTS CLUEWORDS
LOVATTS MEGA!
