The newsagent holds a special place in Australian hearts. Whether picking up the paper on a Saturday morning, buying a ticket for that night’s Lotto jackpot or browsing the magazines, we’ve all spent plenty of time visiting our local newsagents over the years. However, with physical newspaper and magazine sales declining, Ovato’s research with newsagents identified an opportunity to support them through a changing landscape by diversifying their product offering to attract new customers.
Ovato developed and launched a new website, TheMarketHub, which would supply invited newsagents with a range of new product categories, from gifts and toys to stationery and books, to help them become a ‘one stop shop’ for time-poor local consumers. As they were already clients of Ovato’s for magazine retail distribution, accounts and marketing lines of communication were already in place, so this new offer dovetailed seamlessly.
Product suppliers were also on board as Ovato’s retail platform allowed them to easily increase the distribution of their products to new outlets via one national partner.
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Consumers crave simplicity and convenience, and with Nielsen data showing that smaller stores now account for 70 per cent of shopping trips, newsagents are ideally placed to offer an easy ‘one stop shop’ for gifts, entertainment and essentials.
With an existing customer base of 2,500 unaffiliated newsagents across Australia, and existing supply chain infrastructure in place, Ovato developed a plan to supply newsagents with a more diverse range of products available to order online via TheMarketHub. This allowed newsagents to successfully evolve into a useful, customer-focused retailer.
With the support of TheMarketHub, Australian newsagents are filling a void in the market, offering a variety of merchandise to customers that makes their lives a little easier. This is particularly important for customers in regional or rural areas that don’t necessarily have the same access to fast online delivery or large-scale department stores – but do have a local newsagent down the road, where they can pick up household necessities, gifts or toys and books for their kids.
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The roll-out of TheMarketHub was a staged one to ensure a smooth process. With every phase, feedback was sought and fed in to refine marketing and operations, but from the get-go, the groundwork done in advance paid dividends with Ovato receiving highly positive feedback from all the newsagents involved. Ovato provided a range of support over the launch, to enable organisations to get the most out of the new service. This included weekly eDMs, bi-monthly best-sellers lists to show what products and categories were delivering the most sales, print and digital catalogues, and personal customer support calls to answer any product or ordering questions.
TheMarketHub website offered newsagents with an easy-to-use portal for all their products and made it simple to order stock and update shelves with different types of offers. The Ovato team was on hand to help them through the entire process and make sure there was a wide variety of high- quality product stock for newsagents to select from. The initiative was a huge success and two years on, TheMarketHub continues to deliver value for newsagents across the country. New products are added each month and the site now offers circa 6,000 product SKUs across 37 categories.
