The Newsagents Federation of NSW and QLD are apparently complaining to Australia’s competition watchdog, the ACCC about the industry’s largest supplier, Gordon & Gotch. Their complaint centres around the supply of international magazine titles which they say they do not want and that eats up their cash flow. A journalist contacted me yesterday to make a comment on this, and it really got me thinking.
No one ever says a good word about the three major Australian distributors (Gordon & Gotch, NDD and Network), or the major New Zealand suppliers for that matter either. Retailers bag them as incompetent, uncaring and out of touch with the commercial realities of magazine retailing. We can’t really comment about newsagents and their interactions with the three suppliers, but we do deal with the same three players and our experience has been somewhat different.
First, it needs to be said that mag nation doesn’t have this same problem with international magazines. While we appreciate why newsagents don’t want these titles, international and hard to find niche magazine titles are what define mag nation. Our range is our real point of difference and we have made our name on both international, and more to the point, air freighted magazines.
However, while we have the usual frustrations with the major suppliers, all in all, we think they aren’t half bad at what they do. We have tried like crazy to pick holes in the allocation algorithms but all in all, their adjustment mechanisms based on real sales work pretty well. When we receive a title that we don’t want, we call them and they stop sending it to us. If we get too many copies of a particular title, we call them and they adjust the quantities. And if we want more copies, they do their best to accommodate us.
Sound like rocket science? Not really. Perhaps it is just good communication. Do they make mistakes? You bet they do. But we are talking about thousands of different publications here, and is it reasonable for us to expect they get it 100% right? The most important thing from our perspective is that we are completely convinced that they are aligned in helping us to succeed. Is it that the 3 suppliers are different with us than with newsagents (very possible) or is that our approach to our 3 major suppliers is what is different? Whatever the reason, we will watch with interest as the complaint goes through the ACCC.
