Well as I said in what is already a highly competitive office stationery market another major player Harvey Norman is preparing to enter. They are opening one office supplies store immediately to compete with Officeworks and probably another within a year. Then if all goes to plan, which never happens, there will be a planned a national store rollout of 50 shops. I know one of the representatives of one of the larger stationery companies is already planning to talk with them.

Probably the worst part to my clients will be the effect of the competition between the two big chains. Although I do also expect a repeat of about thirteen years ago when many of our clients were worried about where these officeworks shops were going up, now we will see a repeat with Harvey Norman stationery stores.

It just means that we have to service our clients better, get our technology right and get better.

And while about getting better why don’t newsagents going to the GNS shows bring up with GNS representative the following email sent by VANA and please note that this email was dated 21/11/2005 on 08:21 AM to GNS.

It is important to work together with GNS to overcome these issues so we as a group can achieve success against Officeworks and now Harvey Norman.

Jason,

Is there any progress on these issues raised after the Penninsula
Regional Meeting?

Regards
Peter Cowley

Hi Jason,

Many thanks to yourself and Frank, for presenting to our members at the recent Regional Group Meetings. As a result of these meetings, members raised several issues that we would like you to follow up on and advise of the status. If we can be of any assistance is progressing these matters please do not hesitate to touch base.

Improving Store Layout
With the stationery department the most subject to discretion in terms of layout and with the plethora of new owners over recent times, it
would be very beneficial to help members with pictures of great / suggested stationery layouts (perhaps these could be put on your website). The Magazine Publishers of Aust has recently begun piloting category layouts throughout Australia.

Improving Processors
Some workshops or Facts At A Glance documentation to encourage newsagents to use greater efficiency in their operations would be a great initiative.
Topics could cover:
-receipting stock into their business electronically
-adopting shelf labels.
-automatic reordering
-getting the most out of internet ordering

Technical Issues
Barcodes: use inner barcodes rather than outer in the ddo files
Turnover orders trade show stock receipt: this needs improving.
Presently newsagents only receive a packing slip, which makes it near-on impossible to invoice in properly and subsequently the stock is delayed onto the shelves

I bet all these things will happen at the Harvey Norman shop.

http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/QueenslandNewsagents/

A new online group is being set up for Queensland Newsagents
by Robert Amisano
VINCENT NEWS
TOWNSVILLE Chairman

Any Queensland Newsagent is invited to join this group at Yahoo

Attached is his message

I designed this board to be a serious and creative place for
newsagents to exchange ideas, news, opinions and discuss problems
facing us in Queensland.

It is an open forum for all newsagents. All contributors are
responsible for their own comments.

So for more communication between Queensland newsagents, I invite all
of you to join our new board to provide an environment for sharing our
experiences.

To join, press the following picture:
http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/QueenslandNewsagents/

I hope to see you here regularly

Robert Amisano
VINCENT NEWS
TOWNSVILLE Chairman
Ph: (07) 47 798200, Fax: (07) 4725 3390
Vincent Village News, 249 Nathan St, , VINCENT Q 4814

We agreed to help out by offering technical advice only.

To join, go to the link:

If someone else has a interest is setting up a similar group and needs technical help please contact Michael Varger
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0419 553 901

A client calls me to ask me to change his system into a retail only newsagents system. I know the other guy well so I start to talk “What happening?.....You selling?”. He replied “Nah just getting out of home delivery….Isn’t worth it…. Had enough!…. Then what do you think about it?”

I told him, it is very dangerous in the long-term as you are selling your business. Deliveries are what make you unique! Maybe you should consider just contracting out the delivery and still do the rest of it. At least you will have control over that side of the business. I doubt I got though to him but I think I am right. A newsagent without territory in the long-term is what?

Still I can understand people selling their territory. The economics are marginal unless you are doing a lot . It is very time-consuming. The long-term is a long way away. Extra cash now is appreciated. Possibly the most important is the energy that used in home delivery is often better spent in the shop.

Still at the rate it is going I am wondering how many newsagents will remain doing home deliveries? Looking at one of our larger delivery agents, I noticed that he is doing about 18,000 home deliveries a week. Fifteen years ago his territory would have been serviced by eighty newsagents. This I suppose is what the major newspaper publishers News Corp and Fairfax want! Instead of eighty accounts all they have to worry about is one account. As these newspaper distribution businesses become bigger still, it gives them fewer accounts and drop sites.

More and more these publishers for home delivery only need retail newsagents for their special offers. I suspect this is in the long-term is quite dangerous for the retail newsagent.

It appears there are now two main bidders for borders Dymocks and Angus & Robertson. Both of them have about 17% of the Australian book industry. I guess that Dymocks are mostly looking to get a bigger share of the Australian book industry with Borders 24 giant bookshop shops.

On the other hand Angus & Robertson which was owned once by Gordon and Gotch now is owned by a PEP who also owns a Newsagency chain, Supa News which runs about 28 newsagencies in Australia. Obviously they are keen to expand their share of the Australian books and magazines industry. Getting money is not an issue to PEP as they are just huge. Think about it now. This one division of PEP, I worked out has about 348 good shops Australia wide and in New Zealand another 76 good shops. With power like that I am sure they are thinking among things is the bigger that they are the better discounts they can get from the supplier.

I hope now the magazine distributors should think about their smaller retailer as soon they may have little to negotiate. Say I was a magazine producer. I decided to go direct. So off I went to Coles, Woolworths, Angus & Roberts and maybe Dymocks. Now what and soon what!

Also I hope that newsagents’ clients are thinking of all of this too! Not that there is much we can do about it.

Sometimes business owners feel overwhelmed with their technology. I want them to know that they are not alone. Many times I personally have felt the same way. Perhaps reading through this testimonial will help show that if you are willing to come and learn at one of our free training session, we can help you.

From: Stows Newsagency
To: 'michael varger'
Sent: Wednesday, 18 July 2007 10:03 AM
Subject: Training

Michael

Just a short note to say how well the training day went yesterday. We had about 8 starters and 1 apology. It was a credit to Phil and Adam the way that they ran the training day. We all learned a lot and all the comments from the newsagents were positive.

Please thank the 2 boys and we look forward to another day next year.

Cheers

Trevor

There is no reason to feel stressed by computers

 

Pos Solutions is now scheduling more user meetings and training sessions throughout Australia. These are especially for newsagents.

If you’re a POS Solution’s client or just interested in our software and are interested in coming to such a session please contact us.

You can contact our CEO, Michael Varger, to book a place!
Telephone: 0419 553 901

Today Ajmer and Raj from Seddon Newsagency came in for a training session with Leon and I. They had many queries regarding subagent payments and transactions, general stock and customer maintenance, and updating the input devices currently in their shop.

One issue they had with subagents is a common one. When subagent payments are made in parts and not in full, this can create a problem with their balance (where incorrect values are shown). One way to fix this is to make a statement every time a subagent makes a payment. Alternatively, Leon suggests, as newsagency owners, you should send out a notice to your subagents informing them they must pay in full on a constant basis. You should not demand this immediately though; give your subs some time to prepare.

After the meeting, Ajmer and Raj seemed much more confident with the system. They were happy to have their problems sorted out and the extra information (instruction manuals, etc) we gave them will hopefully allow them to keep their business running smoothly.

Marc.

You need to be on posBrowser, if so email Gordon and Gotch on
[email protected]

Fill in the xxxxx's below!

We would like to start doing online returns. Could you please contact us.

Subject: Gordon and Gotch online returns

Newsagency details
Name: xxxxxxxxx
Contact: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Tel: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Address: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Address: xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Regards

And send it off to [email protected]

Once you get approved which does not take long then let us know. If you have any issues then let us know too.

Advice sheets are also available.

Any questions give me a call on (03) 95977222

We continue our training program.

We are doing a training session for our DOS users Tuesday 10 July 2007 for Victorian newsagents. This is for those that use the POS Solutions Newsagency management software for DOS. It will at 10:00am at VANA the newsagent association at 806-810 Nicholson Street North Fitzroy Vic 3068

The morning session will cover

Computer Maintenance
-Basic care
-Backups
-Virus
-Spam

Customers
-Accounts
-Newspaper deliveries
-Charging
-Statements

Subagents
-Accounts
-Process
-Returns
-Charging
-Statements
-Automated ordering

Questions and answers section

The afternoon session

Cash register
-Operation
-Balancing
-Usage
-Reports
-Security

Stock
-Stocktaking
-Maintaining Stock Control
-Ordering
-XchangeIT

Questions and answers section

To join please book please contact VANA on Ph: (03) 9482 2911 Fax: (03) 9482 1799

The on going saga of the News Ltd subscriptions is still on. We just had another meeting today with News Ltd today on this issue. I know we are almost there but we have been almost there for two months. It is still not so simple in the real world to get a date for when a customer stopped a subscription.

Based on their figures, I estimate that we going from our clients’ data base to add about 381,000 records. So it is no wonder that with us they are being so careful. It is a lot of data.

Still it is frustrating.

A nifty trick when doing a stocktake in your shop is to update all of your magazine return’s forms beforehand. Then make sure that you get the total value of the magazines due for return. That way you don’t have to count the number of titles in the form waiting to be returned while doing the stocktake.

Now your total figure for the magazines can be added on to the stocktake total for magazines stock to give you your stock-on-hand value.

This tip should work on any newsagency system.

I got a couple of clients enquiring yesterday about doing Gordon and Gotch online returns. The reason is obvious as it is definitely a good cash flow saver.

If you are interested please let us know. We will explain to you how it works. We also have some detailed advice sheets on how to set it up.

At the same time to save time, please register your interest for EDI returns for GG at the following email address:
[email protected]

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21939664-5001021,00…

Those that have been reading this blog will know the troubles of one of our clients Michael Pavellis from World Square Newsagency. I have never met him but our support staff in NSW who know him well say he is a nice guy.

Background for those not following the case: Two winners of the NSW lottery came into World Square Newsagency. There they were served by a trusted employee of the newsagency who filled out for them a claim form. Later he substituted their claim form for one of his own and sent this form with their winning ticket, to NSW Lotteries. 14 days later he was paid the $574,000. Then he disappeared, possibly to Indonesia.

A week later the rightful winners contact NSW Lotteries inquiring about their prize. After a legal battle, the NSW Lotteries paid the prize money again, this time to them.

Then the NSW Lotteries started proceedings against the newsagency owners saying they were negligent

Even though the judge stated there were faults in Lotto, the judge ruled the Newsagency was negligent. Since it was an employee fraud which is third party, the insurance does not cover it. World Square Newsagency owner Mr. Pavellis has to pay the NSW lottery $574,000 for the winnings, plus the NSW lottery legal fees, plus the costs of NSW lottery investigation, plus his own legal fees of about $200,000 and some other costs.

So this $574,000 fraud is going to cost Mr. Pavellis over a $1,000,000!

This is the biggest legal case in the Newsagency industry that I have ever seen.

As Mr. Pavellis states he does not have the money to pay, he is going to appeal. So it is not yet over. Still I don't like his chances as I remember a lawyer saying to me that most appeals are lost.

Since this decision, I recommend anyone that has lotteries to review how they handle customer claiming their winnings.

This could have happened to anyone that sells lotto as Mr. Pavellis is a good operator.

You can read about it here.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21939664-5001021,00.html

The MPA magazine handbook for the US market is available now

Obviously there are different issues in Australia to the US still it is interesting. The main difference is the US retailer has little interest in magazines, generally they stock fewer and sell less then we do. To try to get retailer there more interested, the magazine supplier offers them a higher commission then here.

The other issue is that since they are from the magazine association they probably do exaggerate the results for magazines.

Having said that it is a fascinating detailed and well presented study.

What I thought was interesting is that it shows clearly that a magazine customer is a good customer to get. Both in that they buy more and they buy better items. It is a product worth having just to get people into the shop.

What is fascinating too is how much influence on people’s behaviour magazines do have!

Have a read .

The MPA’s magazine does have a detailed re-lay programme a system which we have been behind since the start.

Using it one of our clients Merredin Newsagency in Western Australia won this year $5000 cash first prize in MPA’s Newsagency magazine management competition they reported that it gave a significant uplift in magazine sales.

If you contact MPA on (02) 9923 1568 they will send you out a free copy of their Newsagency Manual.

Note most of our users using this method report that it is about 90% there but it does need some fine-tuning. Something you expect.

We are expecting sometime in July or August for the work to start on improving the Connect Newsagent portal.

What the plan is for the Connect portal newsagents to be complimented by an automatic system going though the computer software without you doing anything.

The other important issue is the subscriber mess. It is crazy now because the information in the newsagent system is not matching to the newspaper marketing department. As a result people now on subscription are being contacted to resubscribe and former subscribers are forgotten because the computer at News Corp thinks they are still getting a paper. This problem is costing everyone.

What we would also like is the invoices from News Ltd to be send to you every day after 4:30pm. That way you could have your paper supplies in his system automatically. No going to the portal every night to figure out what you are getting tomorrow.

Although News Corp did not say anything it would be great if other people could be allowed to piggyback on to this system. Then we could finally have a newsagent standard communication system that we were talking about for years.

I don't mean drugs but where someone falls down hurts themselves.

Anyway while reading the paper today, I read that one of my clients Yarra Glen Newsagency has a close call about tripping.

I found the same story here online.

An eighty-two year old woman who tripped in front of the Yarra Glen Newsagency. She broke her hip in the town’s main street and unfortunately will now face many months of rehabilitation.

That it could have been avoided appears clear, the pavers in front were in a bad state. The owner of the Yarra Glen Newsagency owner Joe Perri described their condition as “despicable”. The shire stated that they did not have enough money to fix it earlier something the councils always say rather then do anything.

You wonder what happens to the fortunes of money these councils get from the community. The shire, I bet now, will have money for lawyers to debate whether they did their job and what exactly their duty of care is! Somehow I suspect now there will also be money to fix the pavers. I confess, I am dissatisfied with the job our local councils are doing in general.

After reading this, I remembered that another one of my clients Hampton Park had one in the shop. So I went over my work building looking for spots where people could trip. I don’t need such problems.

Hallmark just won the newsagent supplier of the year award. It stunned me, as I would have thought that it would be to a supplier that supplies all newsagents like ACP or News corp rather then one like Hallmark that only supplies about half. Those that do use Hallmark must have really voted for them.

So I took the opportunity while congratulating Ron Thorpe, who is the National Business Development Manager for Hallmark Cards in Australia, to ask about a setting up a category system for cards that our users could use. Similar to what magazine companies do now for their products with MPA.

He firstly thanked me for my best wishes.

Then he told me "The Australian Greeting Card Association at my instigation is currently working to develop a common category system for all member companies to adopt. It should be finalized within the next 60 days"

Now 60 days means the 13th August 2007.

So on the 13th August 2007, we can expect a public category system for cards that will be beholden on all the major card suppliers and most the minor ones. If 50% happens by then, I am sure after so many years of requesting it we all will be happier.

I went to a talk recently. After the talk I thought that the presenters reminded me so much of this video.

[youtube]HLpjrHzgSRM[/youtube]

Some speaker and organizers should be punished by having to listen to these talks after putting the public though them.

I read one of my competitor’s blog posts that one of my clients was upset over our software cost for a year of $6,000+. I decided to hear what my client-side of the story was.

It was easy to find him as I have only one client that pays that much. All other of my clients pay only a small fraction of that.

So I rang him. I told him that I heard that you have been talking to my competitor about the software bill. He sheepishly replied that he had but how did I know? I said it is on his blog site.

I then stated how could he say he was misled? We had talked earlier for ages about it. Then we had given him an invoice earlier before we even did the work. Further we only continued after he agreed to proceed.

He read the article and then admitted that he had approached my competitor to see what they could do! They could not do what was required. However, even if they could have what he liked was the posbrowser ease of use so he would have stayed with us.

He also felt that the blog post was a misrepresentation of the facts. His confidence was breached and written without even asking him. In his words "extremely unprofessional".