David Heathcoat-Amory MPMy interest was pricked when I received an email alert about the MP for Wells backing the 'Save Our Newsagents' campaign. David Heathcoat-Amory is a descendent of John Heathcoat who founded Heathcoats, a textile business that he moved to Tiverton in Devon in 1816.
My father worked for Heathcoat's in the 1950's which is why this MP's support of the campaign caught my interest.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory says:
'Independent shops give colour and character to a shopping street and I would hate it if all our towns became dominated by the national retail chains. Independent newsagents are under great pressure from rising costs and the danger of a monopoly developing in wholesale distribution. I will be raising this in the House of Commons because I do not want our independent newsagents to go the way of small post offices.'
When my wife and I bought our newsagents in 1989 it was a tired, worn out shop that had a huge dependency on just one product category, newspapers, even worse it depended on one title the Daily Telegraph. But it had potential.
It was supported by a grocer, a post office, a butcher, a garage and an off licence. The gems though, were the free to use Parish Council owned car park and the space to develop. Through regular and sometimes large investment and the support of the community we have built our shop into a sustainable business.
The issue I don't quite understand with the 'Save Our Newsagents' campaign is what is being asked for. The NFRN's petition is all about asking the Office of Fair Trading to take another, this time urgent, look at newspaper and magazine distribution.
Er, how will that help? The main reason why newsagents are going out of business is low sales of their key product.
With core newspapers sales falling below 10 million a day I reckon that the weakest 50% of selling points are only selling just over 2 million between them and the bottom 20% sell around half a million copies a day. These are spread very thinly across more that 10,000 shops.
That’s just 50 newspapers a day on average and at the average selling price of 45p and 23% gross margin that’s only £5.00 gross profit.
For a shop open 12 hour each day that’s 40p gross profit from newspapers for each hour they are open, 40p!
And then there are the wholesaler carriage/service charges to be paid.
John Heathcote was inventive, tenacious, and above all a great entrepreneur. Even when his factory in Loughborough was attacked by ‘Luddites’ in 1816 he walked away from any hope of reward to make his new venture to work in Tiverton. And this was clearly hugely successful. So successful that David Heathcoat-Amory is a Member of Parliament just like his illustrious predecessor.
If Mr Heathcoat-Amory and the other MPs who have signed up to this campaign want to really help then here’s a list of things they can try to bring about.
1. Vote against the Tobacco Display Ban.
2. Force the next Government to deliver on promises of reduced Regulation.
3. Deliver reduced Business Rates for Essential Community Services such as Post Offices and Newsagents.
4. Help set up a cross newspaper and magazine industry programme to assist newsagents to change their business model to enable them to become more successful.
5. Force the next Government to recognise that Micro Businesses are and face a different set of problems to S.M.Es.
6. Help the bottom end newspaper and magazine selling points to find something else to do that may be more profitable for them to do even it it means closing their shops.
7. Help bring about change by facilitating the use of the Sustainable Communities Act.
8. Help bringing an effect answer to why supermarkets have a buying advantage/better payment terms over others in the channel as this particularly disadvantages Home Newspaper Delivery retailers.
It is not just newsagents that are suffering from this recession, High Streets business across the country are also feeling the fail with thousands closing. Some High Streets are never going to recover.
Just like newsagents many need remodelling.
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2 comments:
Bravo!
John Heathcoat was a remarkable man. If the 20 or 30 thousand 'newagents' who feel that they need saving took some inspiration from what he did in his life, they would save themselves!
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