Tag: category management

How to decide which product ranges to stop stocking

Deciding what to stop stocking is harder than deciding what to add. Most retailers enjoy adding ranges. Very few enjoy removing them. That imbalance is why shops slowly fill with categories that no longer earn their space.

Adding is optimistic. Removing feels like loss. But every shelf you keep for sentiment is a shelf unavailable to something that could perform.

A simple test helps. For each category, ask three questions. What does it turn over? What gross profit does it generate in dollars? How much selling space does it occupy? A category taking fifteen percent of your floor and returning four percent of your gross profit is not a range. It is rent you are paying twice.

Then check the second-order value before cutting. Some low-margin lines bring people in reliably and lead to other purchases. Others simply sit there. The way to tell the difference is basket analysis: what else do those shoppers buy on the same transaction? If the answer is nothing, the category is not a traffic driver. It is a habit.

Watch for the range that is failing because it was never given a fair chance. Six facings hidden low on a back wall will underperform regardless of demand. Before you exit a category, ask whether you actually retailed it: good position, adequate depth, clear pricing, staff who mention it.

When you do cut, cut properly. Half-exiting a category leaves you with the costs and none of the presence. Shoppers notice a thin, tired range and draw conclusions about the whole shop.

Reinvest the space deliberately. Give it to something with proven turn, then measure the result at thirty and ninety days. If it works, expand it. If it does not, you have learned something cheaply.

Do this twice a year and the shop stays current without dramatic reinvention. Skip it for five years and you will need a costly reset.

This is exactly the work our space and category productivity analysis is built for, using your own sales data rather than opinion. If you would like to see which parts of your floor are carrying the shop and which are being carried, email help@newsxpress.com.au.

Young men are buying journals. Is your shop ready for them?

A customer walks into your shop: male, late twenties, headphones around his neck. He is not lost. He is looking for a journal, and he knows exactly what he wants. If your stationery display is pastel covers and inspirational quotes, he will leave without buying.

If you want to sell more journals, this advice is for you.

Young men aged 18 to 40 are one of the fastest-growing customer groups in the journal and planner category. They found the habit through podcasts, online communities and content built around discipline, productivity and mental health, and they are buying with intent. Globally, diaries and planners are a $9.4 billion market growing at nearly 6 per cent a year, and structured, guided formats now make up more than half of sales. This is not a niche. It is a shift.

Here is what makes this customer valuable. He is considered rather than cheap: he will happily pay for the right product and walk straight past the wrong one at a third of the price. He is loyal: once he finds a journal that works for him, he rebuys it. And he brings a second customer with him: the parent, partner or friend looking for a meaningful gift for a young man, who just needs the display to tell them what the right choice is.

Serving both shoppers from one small display is very achievable in a gift shop, newsagency or garden centre with a gift offer. But the detail matters: which covers and formats to stock, what language to use on signage, how to bundle for the gift buyer, where to position the display and at what price points. Get those wrong and the category sits; get them right and it turns all year, with margins well above a standard diary.

newsXpress has done that work for our members: a complete category insight covering the shopper, the stock, the suppliers, the merchandising and the numbers. It is one example of how we help members find growth categories before they are obvious.

If you want your shop selling to customers your competitors have not noticed yet, contact newsXpress. This category is a very good place to start.

Most shops sell greeting cards. Few make what they should from them

Australian newsagents sell a third of all greeting cards bought in this country, and the average Australian buys eight or nine cards a year. Cards are a high margin habit purchase. Most shops still make less from them than they should.

The problem is rarely the supplier. It is the pockets. In almost every card department, some pockets earn their space many times over while others sit close to idle. Without data, you cannot tell which is which.

That is where our work starts. newsXpress has developed proprietary pocket-level performance analysis, exclusive intellectual property not available anywhere else. We apply it to your own sales data and return specific recommendations on which pockets are earning their space and which are not. There is no charge for participating members.

The results are why we keep talking about it. One member moved 120 pockets from one supplier to another and more than doubled the return per pocket. Another cut card pockets by 25%, moved to a split supplier model, and grew card revenue 33%. The list goes on: a 70% revenue lift from splitting cards between two suppliers with no capital outlay, and a 50% lift from replacing $2 everyday cards with a better margin mix.

The analysis is ongoing rather than a one-off. Run it, make changes, then run it again and see whether the changes worked. Card departments drift over time, and the data catches the drift before it costs you a season.

“On implementing newsXpress’s card advice, I saw 76% growth in cards over 12 months. Their strategies contributed to an overall sales increase of 57% in the same period.” — Matt Donkin, newsXpress Mount Lawley, WA

There is no restriction on which card suppliers newsXpress members use. We hold preferred terms with Henderson Greetings, Waterlyn, Hallmark, Simson, Affirmations, Vevoke, Paper Street and Spirit, but the goal is not to push any particular supplier. The goal is the best possible return from the space you give to cards.

If cards are a wall you fill rather than a category you manage, there is money being left on the counter. Call Michael Elvey on 0400 331 055 or email help@newsxpress.com.au and ask about the card analysis.

From newsagency to accelerator: why the shopfront still has a future

Independent retail is not dying. The traditional newsagency model is under real pressure, and the numbers are hard to argue with. Newspaper unit sales fell 13% in 2025. Magazine revenue keeps contracting. Lottery players are steadily moving online. These are structural shifts, not seasonal dips.

It’s easy for local small business retailers, independent retailers, to talk their situation down, to find a negative well and wallow in it. newsXpress helps you see opportunities and leverage the for a healthier and more valuable outlook.

It all starts at the front, what people walking past see.

The same shopfront, rebuilt around the right categories and run with the right tools, can become genuinely profitable and enjoyable to own. The businesses that prove this every day have not moved premises or spent a fortune. They have simply changed what the space is asked to do.

This is the difference between a marketing group and an accelerator. A marketing group promotes a channel. When that channel is declining, better promotion does not fix the underlying problem. An accelerator changes how the business operates, working on margin, space productivity, stock turn, new traffic, and day-to-day efficiency.

newsXpress now describes itself as a Local Retail Accelerator rather than a newsagency marketing group. The change in language reflects a change in focus. The goal is measurable improvement in business performance, not the promotion of categories that are quietly shrinking.

For a retailer, the practical starting point is a simple question: is each part of the floor earning its keep? Newspapers, magazines and lottery may still have a role, but they rarely deserve the space they once held. High-margin gifts, cards, collectibles and emerging categories often do far more with the same square metres.

None of this requires a dramatic leap. It begins with the data a retailer already has, an honest look at the floor, and a willingness to change what is not working. The shopfront has a future. It simply needs to be pointed at where the money now sits.

If you would like an honest look at what your shopfront could become, start a conversation with newsXpress today.

Greeting cards: the category most retailers quietly underperform

You should be enjoying double digit growth in card sales. That’s the base line, the standard. We say this because we see so many achieving this. Look at your numbers, see for yourself what you’;re doing.

Greeting cards remain one of the strongest categories an independent retailer can own.

Australian newsagents sell about a third of all greeting cards in the country, and the average Australian buys eight or nine cards a year. Despite that, most stores leave real revenue on the table.

The problem is rarely the supplier. It is usually the way the space is managed. A card wall can look full and still perform poorly, because a large share of pockets earn very little while a small share does most of the work. Without pocket-level data, it is almost impossible to see which is which.

This is where careful analysis pays off. newsXpress has developed proprietary pocket-level performance analysis that shows exactly which pockets are earning their space and which are not. Applied to a retailer’s own data, it returns specific, actionable recommendations rather than general advice.

The results members report are striking. One store moved 120 pockets from one supplier to another and more than doubled its pocket return. Another cut card pockets by 25%, shifted to a split model, and lifted card revenue 33%. A third split cards across two suppliers with no capital investment and saw revenue rise 70%. Replacing low-margin everyday cards with a better mix delivered a 50% lift for another.

Importantly, none of this is about pushing a single supplier. newsXpress works with preferred terms across Henderson Greetings, Waterlyn, Hallmark, Simson, Affirmations, Vevoke, Paper Street and Spirit, and members are free to choose. The aim is simply the best possible return from the space allocated to cards.

As one member in Mount Lawley put it after acting on the advice, cards grew 76% over twelve months and contributed to an overall sales increase of 57% in the same period. Those are the kinds of gains available to any retailer willing to look closely at a category they may have taken for granted.

To see which of your card pockets are truly earning their space, ask newsXpress about a pocket-level review. This is a proprietary service from us that is key to helping so many retailers make more money.

How AI tools are already changing what is possible in independent retail

Two years ago, the conversation about AI in retail was largely theoretical. Today, newsXpress members are using AI tools in their businesses every week — not as an experiment, but as a practical part of how they operate.

The applications that have taken hold are not complicated. Writing product descriptions that used to take 20 minutes now take two. Social media content that required a freelancer or a time-consuming internal process is being produced in-store. Supplier invoices that once required manual line-by-line data entry are being processed automatically. Business data that sat in reports nobody had time to read is being analysed and returned as specific, actionable recommendations.

None of that requires technical expertise. It requires having access to the right tools and knowing how to use them.

newsXpress has been helping members with this for more than two years. This year, the group published an exclusive AI toolkit for members — 19 ready-to-use prompts built specifically for retail operations. Alongside that, a series of super prompts runs on members’ own business data and returns insights specific to their situation, not generic advice that could apply to any shop anywhere.

But the toolkit is only part of what newsXpress does with AI.

The bigger application is what happens when the newsXpress team applies AI tools directly to member data. Sales patterns that would take hours to interpret manually get analysed in minutes. Category performance across dozens of stores gets compared and benchmarked. Opportunities that a business owner would never spot in the day-to-day running of a busy shop become visible — which suppliers are underperforming relative to the space they occupy, which product categories are trending in similar stores, where margin is leaking quietly and consistently.

This is what it means to go beyond offering advice. newsXpress uses AI actively, on behalf of members, to surface what the data is actually saying. The result is recommendations grounded in evidence rather than instinct — specific to each member’s situation, not drawn from a template.

The value is not in the technology itself. It is in what that clarity allows a business to do. A store owner who can see exactly which 20% of their range is generating 80% of their margin can make better buying decisions. One who understands which customer segments are growing can allocate space and marketing accordingly. One who knows their card pocket return by supplier can restructure a category without guesswork.

For most independent retailers, time and information are the two constraints that limit everything else. AI reduces the first and improves the second — and newsXpress is built to deliver both.

AI will not fix a business with the wrong product mix or poor margins on its own. But for a business that is willing to look at its data and act on what it finds, the combination of the right tools and the right support makes a measurable difference.

What the data actually says about the traditional newsagency mode

Newspaper unit sales fell 13% in 2025. Magazine revenue continues to contract. Lottery players are shifting to online platforms. These are not temporary dips waiting to reverse — they are structural changes to the categories that once anchored the newsagency model.

Add to this the latest moves by TLC to further drive lottery customers online and away from physical shops.

That does not mean the newsagency business is finished. It means the businesses that are thriving have rebuilt around something different.

What that looks like in practice varies by location, store size, and what the owner wants from the business. Some members have moved heavily into gifts and collectibles, building a range that bears no resemblance to the traditional newsagency floor plan. Others have kept the newsagency identity but shifted the product mix toward higher-margin categories — greeting cards, plush, stationery ranges that command real margin rather than the thin returns of allocated supplier stock.

The common thread in the stores that are growing is that they made deliberate decisions based on their own data. They looked at what each category was actually returning per square metre, assessed what their shoppers were buying versus what they were ignoring, and reallocated space accordingly.

That analysis is not complicated, but it requires looking at the numbers honestly. What is your current margin on newspapers? What does the lottery section actually earn relative to the rent it occupies? What would happen if you took 20% of that space and gave it to a category with better margin and growing demand?

Most independent retailers have the data to answer those questions sitting in their POS system. The challenge is usually knowing where to look and what to compare it against.

newsXpress provides that framework — evidence-based business analysis using your own data, with specific advice on where the opportunities are. The goal is not to push a particular product category. It is to help you make better use of the space and stock you already have.

This is back room work, strategic work, all in service of more successful local retail businesses for newsXpress members.

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newsXpress supports small local independent retailers to thrive. Find out more at help@newsxpress.com.au.

Printer ink and toner: newsXpress helps newsagents think clearly about a category that still matters to some stores

For a segment of newsagency retailers, printer ink and toner remains a genuine part of the business. Customers ask for it. It connects to stationery and office supplies. It brings people back regularly.

Ink is not dead for newsagents, it’s changed, evolved.

Whether it deserves floor space, investment, and staff attention is a different question — and not one that has a single answer across the channel.

newsXpress has developed detailed strategic guidance for members on exactly this category. The guidance does not push a particular outcome. It helps each member think through whether the category makes sense for their specific store, their location, their customer base, and their capacity to manage it well.

That kind of honest, store-specific analysis is what distinguishes useful retail advice from generic category promotion.

The competitive landscape for ink and toner has shifted considerably. Customers can check prices on their phone while standing at your counter. Large format retailers and online specialists have invested heavily in range and fulfilment. The question for an independent retailer is not whether those competitors exist — they do — but whether there is a genuine opportunity that those operators cannot easily serve.

In some locations and for some customer profiles, there is. The newsXpress guidance helps members identify whether their store is one of them.

It also addresses the risks that are easy to underestimate. Stock management in this category requires discipline. SKU counts can grow quickly. Some products become obsolete. Slow-moving stock carries a real cost. The guidance is structured to help members avoid the mistakes that turn a reasonable category test into a cash flow problem.

For members already stocking ink and toner, the guidance offers a basis for reviewing whether the current approach is working as well as it should. For those considering it for the first time, it provides a framework for making the decision with clear eyes.

This is the kind of strategic support newsXpress provides across a range of categories — not telling members what to do, but making sure they have the information and the framework to decide for themselves.

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newsXpress supports small local independent retailers to thrive. Find out more at help@newsxpress.com.au.