Tag: gift shop

Yes, it’s time to stop calling your business a newsagency

The proposal we put to the newsXpress national conference this month is simple to say and confronting to hear. Decouple from the channel. De-identify as a newsagent. Stop defining your business by a word that is losing its meaning, and start defining it by what your customers actually value.

Think about what the word newsagency now means to a shopper. Almost every story about newsagencies is a closing story. The last one in town. Another one gone. Each story is true, and together they teach the public that a newsagency is a business on the way out. That association attaches to the sign over your door whether your own shop is thriving or not. Every newsagent in the country is carrying the reputational weight of every closure in the country, for free, on their own shopfront.

Listen to what the public says online when it thinks we are not reading. “Are newsagents still a thing?” We are called “glorified last minute gift shops”. People group us with video stores and milk bars. Asked whether to buy a newsagency, the replies are blunt: a dying business model, you would be buying a job. That is not a competitor talking. That is our own community telling us what the word already means to them. The nostalgia is real and kind, but affection is not a sale, and the affection is for a good local shop, never for the word newsagency.

Let us be clear about what we are not saying. We are not telling anyone to close. We are not saying print income is worthless tomorrow. Take every dollar the papers, magazines and lotteries still pay, but take it knowing what it is: a declining annuity, not a foundation.

What must change is the identity. The sign, the window, the Google listing, the socials, the in-store experience, and above all the position your shop holds in the customer’s mind. You can be anything you want. The best card and gift destination in your community is the most natural move, because the categories that resist Amazon and Officeworks, cards, gifts, the tactile, the local, the last minute, are already in your shop. But members have become the best toy shop, the best homewares shop, the best coffee stop in town. What you become is entirely up to you. There is simply no longer any value in being the best newsagent.

The businesses that survive the next ten years will not be the ones that held the word longest. They will be the ones that quietly stopped being one, early and on their own terms.

Tomorrow: the how. Five jobs, two years, four numbers.

Website: www.newsxpress.com.au | Find out more: help@newsxpress.com.au | CEO: Mark Fletcher: 0418 321 338

Storeplay: how to make your shop a place people love, not just a place they buy

There is a reason some local shops are talked about, visited weekly and defended fiercely by their regulars, while others down the road with similar stock struggle for attention. It usually isn’t the products.

It’s how the space makes people feel.Storeplay is often not a retailer will think of when asked about storeplay.

We call the deliberate version of this Storeplay: designing your retail space so it works as what sociologists call a third place. Home is the first place, work is the second. The third place is where people gather, connect and feel comfortable, without an obligation to spend. Think about the cafes people are loyal to. The loyalty is rarely about the coffee alone.

For a local retailer, Storeplay means giving people reasons to slow down, touch things, sit, play and return. It might be a table where customers can sit and work on a jigsaw you sell. A corner where kids can listen to a story read from a book on your shelves. A bench where a shopper’s partner can wait comfortably, so nobody feels rushed out the door.

None of this is decoration. Dwell time is commercially valuable. People who linger see more, feel more welcome, buy more and, most importantly, come back. In a world where anything can be bought from a couch, feeling something in a shop is the thing online cannot match.

The honest bit: Storeplay is work. It can be uncomfortable, because you are inviting people to use your space in ways beyond your usual routine. It also isn’t a set-and-forget project. Good Storeplay keeps evolving through the year, with your seasons and your community.

At newsXpress, we have developed a practical Storeplay strategy for 2026: dozens of specific, low-cost plays matched to the products gift shops, newsagents and garden centres actually sell, plus guidance on layout, music, staffing and measuring whether it is working. Our members are rolling it out now.

If you would like your shop to be a destination rather than a stop, we would love to talk. Contact newsXpress and ask about Storeplay. It could be the most valuable change you make this year.

Collectible coins: the category bringing new shoppers into local shops

Coin collectors are a distinct and often under served shopper segment. They are loyal, they follow release calendars, and they spend well. Most local retailers never see them because they have no way into the category.

newsXpress is the only retail group in Australia with exclusive Mint partnerships. We hold relationships with the Royal Australian Mint, The Perth Mint, the New Zealand Mint, the British Mint and New Zealand Post. These partnerships are not available to any other newsagency marketing group. Through this work we have also developed and released our own limited edition collectible coins. The first release sold out.

For a local shop, the appeal is new traffic as much as margin. Products from the Royal Australian Mint appeal to a demographic that often already visits for newspapers or lottery. They just do not know the store stocks coins yet. Put the category in front of them and a weekly lottery customer can become a monthly collector.

We use Mint data to help members understand the collector audience and attract them to their stores. We have seen members go from selling no coins at all to $50,000 a year in coin revenue.

“The Supercars coins and the AC/DC coin sets helped us find new customers we had never seen in the store before. The Mint relationship from newsXpress has genuinely helped us grow.” — Nick Cassimatis, formerly newsXpress Caboolture, QLD

We also sell coins ourselves, in our own shops and online businesses. Ranges are tested in a live retail environment before we recommend them to members, so the advice comes from counters like yours rather than a brochure.

Coins will not suit every shop, and we will be upfront about that when we look at your situation. Where the category fits, it delivers something most categories cannot: shoppers walking through the door who have never been in before, for product they cannot buy at the supermarket.

Mint access is part of newsXpress membership, a flat $295 a month with nothing mandatory and no lock-in contract. To talk about whether coins fit your shop, call Michael Elvey on 0400 331 055 or email help@newsxpress.com.au.

Seasonal Edge: the member benefit no other group offers

Before every major season, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas among them, every newsXpress member receives a prize pack worth $350 or more, delivered free to their store. With it comes professionally designed in-store signage and digital marketing collateral, ready to use the day it arrives.

We call it Seasonal Edge. No other group in our channel offers anything like it. Exclusive seasonal events built to attract new shoppers run alongside the packs.

The mechanics are simple. You run a customer competition around the prize, and shoppers enter in store. The prize gives people a reason to visit. The signage makes the season look professional in your window, which matters more than most owners give it credit for.

The collateral itself is professionally designed, printed and exclusive to members. It sits alongside the hundreds of digital assets we create for members each year, so the campaign in your window and the campaign on your social media match.

In 2025 we invested more than $1,500 per member in Seasonal Edge prizes and marketing collateral. Members report up to a 20% increase in greeting card sales during promotional periods, and new customers attracted by the prize, many of whom return. They also report something we did not fully expect when we designed the program: product discovery. Winners often find items in the prize pack that they come back and buy again.

There is a quieter benefit too. Around each season, members post photos of their displays in our private group. People borrow ideas from each other and the standard of execution rises every year. It is one of the most practical forms of peer learning we have seen in retail.

Seasonal marketing is where many independent retailers struggle. Doing it well takes design skills and time that a busy shop owner rarely has, plus a print budget on top. Seasonal Edge hands you the whole package. Your job is to put it to work on your shop floor.

Seasonal Edge is included in newsXpress membership, which is a flat $295 a month with no lock-in contract. To see what the next season pack looks like, call Michael Elvey on 0400 331 055 or email help@newsxpress.com.au.

newsXpress is not a marketing group. Here is what we are instead

For most of our 25 years, people have described newsXpress as a newsagency marketing group. We no longer describe ourselves that way, and the difference matters if you own an independent retail business.

Marketing groups promote a channel. The trouble is that the traditional newsagency channel is in structural decline. Newspaper unit sales fell 13% in 2025. Magazine revenue is contracting. Lottery players are moving online. No amount of catalogue marketing fixes that, and we think it is dishonest to pretend otherwise.

So we work differently. newsXpress is a Local Retail Accelerator. We work on the specifics of your business: your data, your floor space, your margins, your suppliers, and what you personally want from the shop. The goal is measurable change in how the business performs, which usually starts with margin and how hard each square metre is working.

Independent retail is not dying. We say that because we see it in member data every week. The same shopfront, rebuilt around the right categories and run with the right tools, makes good money and is enjoyable to own. We also run our own shops and online businesses, and we test ideas there before we recommend them to anyone.

The commercial model is deliberately simple. Membership is $295 a month for your first store, and $0 for up to two more stores you own. There is no percentage of turnover, no minimum purchase obligation and no exit penalty. We are not a franchise, and nothing we offer is mandatory. If you leave, your agreement ends and what you built stays yours.

We are not right for everyone. If your plan relies primarily on newspaper home delivery, lottery commissions, parcel collection and betting top-ups, we are probably not the right fit, and we will say so. If you are looking for supplier discounts alone, you will find some with us, but discounts are not where the real money is.

If you want a more profitable, more valuable and more enjoyable business, and you are open to change, we should talk. Call Michael Elvey, our Retail Development Manager, on 0400 331 055, or email help@newsxpress.com.au. If we are not a good fit for you, we will tell you.

The $9.77 shop and the $28.72 shop: what our gift data reveals

In our latest benchmark study of 32 newsXpress member shops, 14 reported meaningful gift department data for January to May 2026. The spread in performance was wide, and instructive.

The lowest average gift unit price in the network was $9.77. The highest was $28.72. Nine of the 14 shops grew gift revenue year on year, and the strongest grew it by 149%.

The shops at the bottom of that range are mostly selling novelty and impulse items. Cheap, cheerful, easily found at a discount department store. The shops at the top have built something different: a curated, considered gifting destination with brands like Koh Living, Splosh and Affirmations, plus quality local suppliers. Product a customer cannot price-check on their phone in three seconds.

Our consistent finding across the network is that shops with gift average unit prices above $20 outperform shops below $12. A gift department that feels different from Big W or the supermarket wins. One that feels like a smaller version of them loses.

The good news for any retailer reading this: building a real gift destination does not require a big floor. It requires discipline. The advice we gave members from this study:

  • Choose quality over quantity. A tight range of 30 good lines beats 100 average ones.
  • Refresh regularly. Gift customers return looking for what is new. Give them a reason.
  • Price with confidence. Considered gifts carry margin because the customer is buying meaning, not commodity.

This analysis, and the shop-specific advice that follows it, is part of what newsXpress provides members for free. We also connect members with preferred gift suppliers, share what is selling across the network before trends peak, and run seasonal marketing that drives gift purchases in-store and online.

Independent retailers often tell us they know gifts matter but do not know where to start. That is exactly the gap a good marketing group fills. The data from your peers shows what works. We bring that data, the supplier access and the playbook. You bring the shop.

Our goal is to help local retailers thrive and we do this by figuring out, based on their location, data and financial situation, steps they can take that are more likely to work. Our approach is evidence based, Coll;aborative and proven year on year.

Who is the ideal newsXpress member?

Not everyone is a fit. That’s not a criticism — it’s honest.

newsXpress works best for people who want to grow their business. Not protect what they have, not manage a slow decline, not wait and see. Grow. Find new shoppers. Bring in categories that weren’t there before. Build something that earns more per transaction than it did three years ago.

We’re looking for owners who see their business differently from how it was set up. The traditional newsagency model is well understood. It served a lot of people well for a long time. But the world around it changed, and the shops that are thriving now are the ones whose owners decided to change with it — or ahead of it.

That’s the newsXpress member. Someone already pulling their business toward something new.

It might mean adding gifts, homewares, or locally relevant products that no chain would bother stocking. It might mean rethinking the floor layout, the customer experience, the way the shop feels when someone walks in. It might mean going after a completely different type of shopper than the one who came in ten years ago.

We’re not prescriptive about what change looks like. Every location is different. Every owner is different. What we care about is the direction of travel.

Location doesn’t determine fit. We have members in capital cities and small rural towns. A busy suburban strip and a quiet main street can both work. Capital backing doesn’t determine fit either. Some of our best members started with limited resources and made up for it with energy and willingness.

The one thing that does matter is desire. A genuine, hot desire for change. Not curiosity about it. Not a vague interest in doing things differently someday. A hunger that’s already showing up in what you’re doing — or trying to do — right now.

newsXpress exists to back that kind of owner. We bring ranging ideas, marketing support, supplier access, and a network of people working through the same challenges you are. We share what’s working. We help members move faster than they would alone.

If you’re already moving, we want to hear from you.

If you’re not sure whether you’re ready, ask yourself one question: do you want your business to look different in two years than it does today? If the answer is yes, we’re probably a fit.

Talk to us.

What the Lincraft closure actually tells us about independent retail

Lincraft confirmed yesterday it’s closing every store in Australia and New Zealand. Eighty years of trading, done.

The commentary will follow a predictable path. Consultants will use it as a case study. Retail journalists will write about physical retail dying. Neither response is especially useful.

Lincraft was a chain. It ran at scale — national leases, centralised supply, fixed cost structures across dozens of locations. When that model stops working, it stops working everywhere at once. That’s not the situation an independent retailer faces. One shop, a local customer base, the ability to change something this week and see the result next week.

The data from newsXpress member stores tells a different story from the headlines. The most recent benchmark covered 33 stores, January to May 2026 against the same period last year. Transaction count was down 4.1%. Revenue was up 4.8%. Average sale value was up 8.5%. Gross profit was up 10%. That’s 750,000 transactions from locally owned shops. Not businesses in decline — businesses mid-transition, and the transition is working.

No consultant drove that. No conference session. Individual owners made their own calls — new categories, adjusted product ranges, shops that reflect what their local customers actually want to buy. Gifts, homewares, sensory toys, things no chain bothers stocking because chains can’t move fast enough or care enough about a single postcode.

That’s the advantage independent retail has always had. It just shows up more clearly when a chain hits a wall.

Costs are up for independents too. Some traditional categories are smaller than they were. Foot traffic has changed. The owners doing well aren’t pretending otherwise — they’ve moved, steadily, in the right direction.

The Lincraft closure is a real loss for the staff and the customers who relied on those stores. But scale and longevity don’t protect a business when the model underneath stops fitting the market.

Local ownership and a willingness to change — that’s harder to replicate than any supply agreement.

newsXpress helps local indie retailers thrive on a minimal budget and without overthinking. We like to have fun while we work on our businesses.

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