newsXpress is a privately owned company. We have been in business since 2001. We are a marketing group.
We’re not a franchise. Nothing we pitch is mandatory. We do not charge a fee based on your turnover.
Corporately, we are newsXpress Pty Ltd, ABN 99 098 073 833.
Our head office team is small:
Managing Director: Mark Fletcher. Also owns Tower Systems. Has owned newsagencies since February 1996.
Retail and online strategy and management: Anthony Suta. Anthony has 17 years retail experience in physical and online retail.
Supplier manager and retail mentor: Jennifer Searle. Jennifer has 30+ years retail experience including running her own shops.
Data analyst and retail mentor: Michael Elvey. Michael has 27 years tech, data analysis and retail shop floor experience.
Corporate store manager and retail mentor: Guy Coles. Guy has 20 years retail experience in local indie and national corporate retail.
Corporate store manager and retail mentor: Chris Farrell. Chris has 13 years retail experience including specialty visual merchandising skills.
In addition to running the newsXpress head office and providing member advice, support and services we also run related businesses:
Physical shops in Victoria and several group and corporate owned online businesses.
It’s easy to say no to a website if you don’t have one because you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s also easy if you had one in the past and it failed.
Most websites don’t work. Smart people use a failure to do better next time.
Core to website success is filling needs and wants. While needs and wants are quite different, they compel good online business.
Here are the top reasons why we think every retail business needs a website:
- Capture sales when you are closed. Typically, more than 50% of online purchases are then the brick and mortar business is closed.
- Engage when you are closed. Use chat to answer questions from anywhere, or you geek-out and have an AI chatbot do this.
- Reach people not currently shopping with you. Typically, 75% of sales are from people located nowhere near your shop.
- Have a second outlet for quitting stock.
- Have a place where you can experiment.
- Playing with a plan Bin case your shop finds itself in choppy waters.
- To learn. A website, especially your first website, teaches you so much: What people want. What they could pay. Haw awful some people are.
- To get you out of a rut. If you’ve been in your shop for ages and are mailing it in each day, a website could put a spring in your step.
- To make your shop more valuable. Having a website can make your shop more appealing when you decide to sell.
- To find a secondary brand. Could be the first step in a shop rebrand.
- To drive traffic to the shop. People will find products on your website and visit as a result, for sure.
- To give you another source of revenue that is completely unrelated to anything you do in your shop.
- To harvest email addresses. Email marketing from Shopify is a breeze.
Having a website gives people a landing page from your Facebook, Instagram and TikTok posts. This is important.