In the wake of a very small mention at the end of an article on Chai tea in The Age recently, Chai sales at our Melbourne stores have gone through the roof. We’re talking like, a 400% increase. Which is pretty much bananas, when you consider that of ‘Ten Places to Try’, we’re listed right near the end at number seven!

It has to be said, though, that we don’t really sell a lot of hot drinks. Which is a constant source of befuddlement for us… ’cause in addition to our Chai all other flavours of tea, we make a pretty darn good coffee!

It’s not extracted from beans shat out by Indonesian monkeys nor is it Clover extracted single origin, you know, coffee nerd coffee but if we do say so ourselves, we make a pretty tasty cup of joe.

It’s with some bewilderment then, that we’ll occasionally see customers queued up out the doors of the coffee chain next to our Melbourne CBD store while our machine trickles out just the occasional latte. So, as a special offer you, blog readers, if you come into our Elizabeth Street store this week (Monday, 2nd of August — Friday, 6th August) and bring in a friend (with a printed copy of this blog post) and introduce them to our delicious espresso, then we’ll happily give each of you a coffee on us. On the house. Gratis. Free.

(Yeah, yeah, we know, we are the nicest guys in magazine/coffee retail. What can we say?)

This is a piece of feedback we received via our website. I have not edited it one iota other than taking out the name of the author.

I just wanted to complement Mag Nation on their phenomenal choice in staffing at the Prahran store. I live just around the corner from the store. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday every week its babes babes babes. Those three fine women are a real calling card for the Prahran Mag Nation and are a big reason I keep spending.A bit too shy to ask to her face. Would Miss Monday be free one night? I think some sparks could really fly,I m a handsome dude and you a total babe. What you say? My emails attached.

That is verbatim folks. Babes, babes, babes eh? Now, I thought we had a guy with a bushy beard working there one day a week.

In any case, I am glad that the author of this missive finds some reason to spend money in our store. Perhaps it may have been preferable if it was because of our amazing magazine selection but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

As for referring to one of our lovely staff members as Miss Monday – well, that has got me thinking… Mag nation staff calendar, perhaps? I vote for being Mr March. I’ll even shave my chest.

NB: To my staff members who are reading this blog. I am being flippant. Please do not polish up your resignation letters just yet, and I sincerely apologise for making you think of your boss and his hairy chest.

Last Thursday saw the end of one of our busiest periods in the year. The AGIdeas conference in Melbourne is a massive event, and an opportunity for us to create a pop up retail stall selling books and mags.

As always, it was incredibly well run, with an amazing line up of speakers. All participants we spoke to came away inspired and fired up for another year of creative pursuits.

However, this year our sales from the pop up stall were about half of what they were last year. We don’t really make any profit from our presence at the conference anyway – it really is an opportunity to get our brand name out there, however, the sales performance was a curiosity. When I mentioned this to a couple of people at the stall, they were interested in the reasons underpinning the lower sales, and at the time, I didn’t have a really coherent answer. A couple of factors now come to mind. It took us a few days to analyse all the sales, but we think we now have the reasons pegged:

• We didn’t have the same number of star new releases. Last year Wooden Toy, King Brown and Curvy, had all just released their latest issues. This year, we had in the new King Brown and T-World, but some of our other best sellers are still to arrive.
• Not as many of the speakers this year had books or magazines that sold in high volumes.
• This year was the 20th Year Anniversary of AGIdeas. As such, each participant was given a massive book which celebrated the 20 years of speakers. This thing weighed well over 3 kilos and required 2 hands to carry. Definitely not conducive to people buying books at the same time.
• A number of free back copies of various mags were given away to participants. This was done after discussion with us, so we were in the know, but people are less inclined to buy stuff after receiving a bunch of freebies as well.
• The volcano in Iceland delayed a shipment of some of our more interesting books, meaning they didn’t come out until later on the second day.
• The retail economy sucks. While the niche mags we specialise in may not have suffered, we hear from book retailers that book sales are well down. Also, most people have under-estimated just how much of an impact the government stimulus package had last year on maintaining retail sales.

All in all, we were again happy with our involvement with this fantastic event. Our main aim was to remind people that we exist. With no real budget for advertising, we see these sorts of events as an important extension of our store presence.

However, when you budget for sales of $X, and you end up doing around half of that, it doesn’t do a great amount for your cash flow forecasts. Looks like my kids are going to be serving behind the counter at a few stores in the coming weeks to make up the shortfall!

This week mag nation turned four years old. To the 399 potential investors who laughed at us and said we wouldn’t last more than a year – suffer in your jocks. Ok, so you guys are all probably rich beyond belief anyway, but nothing helped spur us on more than beyond wealthy know-it-alls telling us that no one would ever care about a specialty magazine retail concept.

As for the approximate 4 million customers who have walked through our doors, thanks for caring about a specialty magazine retail concept! Thanks for interacting with us, watching us grow, laughing with us (and occasionally at us), stripping down to your undies for us (with a fair dose of self-interest thrown in), drinking our coffee and most importantly, loving our mags.

It has undoubtedly been a wild ride so far, and we are looking forward to the next four years with great anticipation. What will the face of print look like? Will the iPad impact magazine sales? Which mainstream mags will fold and who will be the new Frankie? Hopefully a presence in Brisvegas and other Australian cities? Maybe even new international horizons…

It is with a real sense of optimism that we quietly pass the four year mark without much fanfare (other than this blog post!). While we have made some real strategic errors along the way, our biggest learning has been that as long as we keep an open dialogue with you, we can’t go too far wrong. Whether it be tactical advice on how to grow our website or more philosophical questions around brand integrity versus the commercial imperative to sell, who needs a Board of Advisors when we have you?

So thanks once again for engaging with us. Retailers are constantly reminded that customers vote with their feet, and we keep on seeing our traffic in store and online increasing, so it is good to know we are doing something right. We hope to continue to serve you with great magazines, designer stationery, creative books, and online subscriptions. More than anything, however, we look forward to continue having fun with you, creating smiles through some (at times loose) connection to magazines, and filling a void in your lives irrespective of whether it relates to magazine availability, receiving a newsletter that makes you chuckle, or simply where you can kill some time when you need to.

Happy birthday to us… but the fact we have made it to four is more about you.