Most newsagents inherit a card plan. The supplier set it up. The previous owner accepted it. Year after year, the same range refills the same pockets, and the same revenue comes out the other end. Or, more often, slightly less revenue each year.
There is a conversation hiding inside that pocket plan that most retailers never have. It is the conversation that has lifted card revenue by 33%, 50%, 70% and 76% in newsXpress shops that did have it.
Why the total card sales number hides the story
If you only look at the headline card revenue, the picture is usually flat. What is hidden inside that flat number is a wide spread of pocket performance. Some pockets are paying their rent five times over. Others are paying nothing.
The retailers who outperform are the ones who can see the spread, not just the average. That is what pocket-level analysis exposes.
The signal we look for
In every shop we audit, the bottom 25% of pockets typically generate less than 5% of card revenue. They occupy floor space. They tie up capital. They cost time to refill. They do not pay their way.
The bottom 25% is also the easiest 25% to fix. You do not need new fixtures. You do not need a renovation. You need an evidence-based decision on what to remove, what to replace it with, and which supplier deserves more of your floor.
Four examples of what happens when the conversation is had
Each of these is a real newsXpress shop:
- One shop moved 120 pockets from one supplier to another. Pocket return more than doubled. Same floor space, same staff, more cash in the bank.
- One shop moved from a single-supplier model to a split model and cut total pockets by 25%. Card revenue went up 33%.
- One shop split cards across two suppliers without any capital investment. Card revenue went up 70%.
- One shop quit the $2 card range entirely and recast the everyday mix. Card revenue went up 50%.
These are not theoretical numbers. They are documented outcomes from shops that ran their own audit, made their own decisions, and watched their own revenue lift.
A 30-day test you can run yourself
Even without help, there is a useful exercise you can do in your own shop:
- Pull last 12 months of card sales by pocket from your POS.
- Sort pockets from best to worst by revenue per pocket per month.
- Mark the bottom 25%. These are your candidates for change.
- Walk the card bay and look at those candidates. Are they on a poor sight line? Wrong supplier for the occasion? Wrong price point? Tired range?
- Pick the five worst. Replace them with content from your strongest-performing supplier in an adjacent occasion.
- Watch the result for 30 days.
Most retailers find that even a small recast lifts revenue noticeably within a month. The reason is that the floor space is being used to display product that customers actually buy.
The conversation to have with your supplier
When you are ready to have it, the conversation is direct and reasonable. You are buying floor space from yourself. The supplier is renting that floor space from you. If a pocket is not paying, it should not be there.
Suppliers who are good partners welcome this conversation, because they would rather have fewer pockets that perform than more pockets that do not. Suppliers who push back on the conversation are telling you something important about the partnership.
Where newsXpress fits
We run pocket-level performance analysis as part of newsXpress membership. The analysis is built on proprietary intellectual property and is unique to our group. It is not a sales pitch for a supplier — it is an honest evidence base for a decision that is yours.
We do this work because the card category is one of the highest-margin categories in any shop, and the difference between an inherited plan and an audited plan can be tens of thousands of dollars a year.
On implementing newsXpress’s advice on cards, I saw 76% growth over 12 months. Their strategies and guidance contributed to an overall sales increase of 57% during the same period.
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Matt Donkin, newsXpress Mount Lawley, WA
What it would mean for your shop
If your card revenue has been flat or sliding for a couple of years, the cost of having the conversation is one phone call. The cost of not having it is more of the same.
If you would like to know what your shop’s card analysis would show, we are happy to walk you through it.
Mark Fletcher 0418 321 338 mark@newsxpress.com.au Michael Elvey 0400 331 055 michael@newsxpress.com.au www.newsxpress.com.au
