nickshanagher

There are two lessons for local shops from this tale of lottery balloons. Last week in the corner shop across the street a big poster appeared in the window announcing an £89 million mega draw in the lottery. Inside the shop, the Camelot stand was decked in blue and white balloons and looked festive and happy. This week, with the draw up to £111 million on Friday, and the balloons had gone. Today a new poster was back up with the bigger draw announced. "Where are the balloons," I asked. "Why did you take them down?" The assistant told me that a courier had brought the point-of-sale pack the previous week and they had put the balloons up as requested. The pack for this week was still to arrive. The lessons are: 1. Point-of-sale works. Last week the shop looked really happy and I was prompted to buy a lottery ticket. I did not expect to win. It was a brief fun flirtation with the opportunity of winning. The shop was a brighter and happier place to be in. 2. Som...

"Our circulation has gone from 250,000 and falling, to 600,000. The cost of getting each copy to a reader has gone from 30p to 4p. We used to pay newsagents for taking the paper, now they take it for free," Evgeny Lebedev, senior executive director of the Evening Standard, told the FT. I nearly choked on my rice pops! He says he has cut his daily distribution costs from £75,000 to £24,000. Which if he publishes 250 times a year is a £12.8m saving. But whether the sums add up, we may never know. Of more concern to a retailer planning to build a business on selling newspapers is Mr Lebedev's suggestion that this is the future for all newspapers. There may not be many of them if it is! Suppliers should not over-estimate the attractiveness of footfall to local retailers. Footfall does not help the weekly payroll, one Yorkshire retailer told me at CTN World, the trade show last weekend. He was particularly critical of a well-know payment services company, who he said h...