Skip to main content

London: greeting cards 1 magazines 0

On a return visit to Hatton News in central London this week, I was surprised to find that two metres of the magazine display had been replaced by cards.

Trade has been difficult for Manoj Harji but he took advantage of the closure of Clinton Cards further down his parade to change his product mix. The cards are generating more profit from the space than the magazines were, he says.

I did not have the opportunity to check his numbers and his range is similar to that in Funky Pigeon, which opened a concession in WHSmith, which is located on the far side of the closed card shop.

The first problem is lower footfall and the second is about filling your linear feet of shelf space with what is scarce, and scarcity is hard to find in the middle of London. (Mind you, across town at Exmouth market Space is selling tiny cards at £3.99, imported from the USA.)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital disruption in the UK wholesale space

“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...
Post a Comment
Read more

New look: big copy small?

The owners of B&Q are talking up how they have cut the price of a store refit from £2.5m to £1m by using wood-effect vinyl instead of wood and painted MDF backboards for displays. Managers are learning to live with grey shelving instead of a warmer-looking cream. Shoppers notice the produce, not the fixtures, suggests one executive. Up to a point! Most local retailers will extract the maximum possible life from their fixtures, sometimes taking too long to change equipment that has become tired. As in all business, it is getting the balance right. Shops need to be refreshed and with a purpose.
Post a Comment
Read more

What do shoppers see

I read a good post (http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2009/08/28/what-do-newsagents-charge-for-faxing.html) asking what price local shops charge for providing a fax service. The blogger had attached a photograph of his sign with his prices on it. What struck me was the message on the sign. "You drop, we fax," it said. "Pressed for time, drop your documents with us and we'll do it for you at no extra charge." That is a message that will persuade most shoppers that you want to give them good value, even if they stay to do the copying or faxing themselves.
Post a Comment
Read more