Friday last week we announced the launch of a newsagency sales benchmark study for April to assess the impact on sales of COVID-19 on that quintessentially Australian retail channel.
Here is the announcement we emailed to the 1,700+ newsagents in the Tower community:
I invite you to provide data for a special COVID-19 related newsagency sales performance benchmark study. The benchmark provides data against which you can compare your business performance.
How to participate.
- Please run a Monthly Sales Comparison Report for 01/04/2020 – 30/04/2020 compared to 01/04/2019 – 30/04/2019.
- Tick the category box. IMPORTANT.
- Tick to exclude home delivery and sub agent data.
- DO NOT tick the supplier box.
- Preview the report on the screen. Save as a PDF and email this to me at mark@towersystems.com.au.
- Read the report yourself and see what it shows you about your business.
I will email the results to all participating newsagents and publish the results on theAustralian Newsagency Blog as a service for all newsagents.
COVID-19 has impacted our channel in myriad ways. I am aware of significant differences between city and country, mall and high street. I’d love to collate data from a good pool of businesses to provide back to the channel useful data on this.
I own and run three newsagencies. Over the years I have had three others. I own newsXpress, the newsagency marketing group.
Tower Systems serves 1,750+ newsagents with best practice newsagency software, We are thrilled to note that our customer base is growing. We welcomed 30+ newsagency businesses as new customers in the last year. Overall, Tower Systems serves in excess of 3,500 small business retailers.
Mark Fletcher
M | 0418 321 338
We are grateful to have the resources to undertake such a study and to have a 15 year track record of running similar studies for the channel.
We will collect the detailed basket data, wash it, analyse it and provide insights back to newsagents.
Our goal is to turn the data around in a few weeks, to provide valuable insights that newsagents can use to further improve their businesses, to leverage opportunities that may be shown in some areas compared to others.
The newsagency channel is a useful view of retail more broadly given the geographic coverage.,
