There was a fascinating post recently on the excellent Newsagency Blog run by Mark Fletcher, a blog that we read quite religiously. It was titled:

“Older women beat older men any day”

Mark defines older as being 75+. Some of the justifications were:

Older women tend to know what they want, they enjoy a laugh and they are prone to flirting, yep, flirting – I like this on a slow day at the counter.

Older men tend to grunt rather than speak words, they rarely laugh and often don’t know what they want.

A number of comments then followed, one which I liked so much that I have to replicate it here in full:

Old women want a bag to put that mag in when they are already carrying two.

Old men dont care.

Old women forage around in their handbag for that 25c to “make the change” easier from that $37.40.

Old men dont worry.

Old women shuffle forward in the queue and when at the counter decide THEN to start looking for the money inside the purse which is inside the bag which is on the floor.

Old men have it in their hand ready for action.

I am introducing a female age limit in my shop.

I thought that this was quite amusing. The really interesting comment however was from one newsagent who, as more of an aside, mentioned that over 70% of his customer base was over 60 years old. The newsagency sector readily admit that they appeal to a more elderly demographic. This is a real worry for us.

We have never been backwards in saying that we are not a newsagency. While we deal with the same product in magazines, we have completely different philosophies and commercial approaches. That said, we need them to survive. They are the main distribution point for all the mainstream magazines, and if newsagents disappear, many magazines will fall by the wayside. mag nation stocks all the niche stuff, but we still do sell a fair number of your everyday titles.

So, my question to the community on the Newsagency Blog is what are you doing to get more relevant for the under 60s? Younger consumers don’t care so much for lotto and newspapers from a newsagent. They don’t want to share stories with a random stranger about their dog having fleas.  They are online, brand savvy, and want a cool lifestyle experience, not an old-fashioned general store experience.

We need you guys to survive and prosper. Can you give us any confidence that you have a plan on how to do this? Then again, I doubt many of you are reading this blog (not that we are by any means fantastic but we are somewhat in the same industry), which probably tells a story in itself.

A little while ago we asked our Twitter followers to send us the names of magazines that they follow on Twitter. The idea was for us to collate all these names and create a list to be used as a resource for any interested parties. We got an absolutely fantastic response, and have now pushed this list live.

http://blog.magnation.com/list-of-magazines-on-twitter/

This is obviously not the definitive list of magazines who use Twitter. If you are a magazine and we have missed you, or if you follow a magazine and it is not on this list, feel free to let us know and we will add it.

The only caveat is that it has to be a physical magazine. We are not listing online only magazines for now.

We will keep on updating this list and try to keep it is relevant and fresh as we can. Thanks to everyone who took the time to send us their suggestions.

We hope that you find this list useful.

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.