October Newsletter

Welcome to our October edition of the newsletter, our full articles are below, so have a good read.

Well, it's a shame to report that we had no visitors to Sydney after my offer of a free lunch in our last newsletter! Clearly everyone is working too hard or was busily attending the Distripress conference (like me). It was a great opportunity to meet face-to-face again with our customer contacts from around the world. For those customers who did not attend we missed you (Karine / Adrian), and as such we will be scheduling time for discussion by phone in the next few weeks. I have provided a blog (my first ever so I hope it is ok!) of mine and John's time at the conference - as you will see it was a working conference (with a bit of football and cricket discussed).

The end of the year is looming fast and we have great promotional plans for 2010 - read more about them below. However it is not time for some Christmas relaxation just yet... your Eight Point team is still working hard to ensure a successful year for our customers and publishers.
Cheers
Andrew

Titles of the month

Sculpture + the enemies
Sculpture + the enemies' is the magazine which focuses on contemporary sculpture in Australia. It also covers other art forms such as painting, drawing, multi-media, installation work, film, writing, music & architecture both here and internationally. The magazine aims to provide articles which keep the reader up to date with new and exciting trends in the art world in Australia as well as internationally.
Katherine/Zoe well done. When we first met the magazine was not even published and we all got there!

Harper's BAZAAR
Harper's BAZAAR is the high fashion magazine that rivals its international cousins from UK and US in quality and content. Over the past year an increase in circulation of 8% has seen it overtake Vogue in Australia. We are delighted to be able to include the mascara tip-on with the December 2009 issue to our customers - it's bound to increase sales, which is what we are all about! Our largest overseas distributions go to the US, Europe and Canada and we are looking forward to some promotions in Japan when Fashion Week hits Tokyo in March 2010.

Dolly
Dolly is the 'go to' magazine for female teens. It is the number one youth title in Australia, and has been highly successful since it launched some 20 years ago. The title covers all things teen - fashion, celebrity news, beauty & medical advice (Dolly Doctor). With circulation numbers increasing YOY by 4%, it dominates this sector. Again, we are delighted to be providing the cover mount with the December issue - of sunglasses and a hat. This issue is sure to be a huge hit.

Marketing News

The past month has been busy with working on our presentations to customers for the Distripress conference. We have ensured all the titles we represent have been presented to our overseas customers - so our customers can review order quantities and refresh their knowledge of our complete range of titles.

The next holidays locally will be at Christmas and we see potential to focus on Australian holiday-makers travelling overseas with marketing activity for our titles around the globe. I have been in touch with many customers to get our planning underway. The Australian dollar is very strong at the moment (not good for an exporter though) and hence the Aussies will be travelling so make sure we promote, promote, promote!

We have commenced air freighting three of ACP's weekly titles (NW, OK! and Woman's Day) to Canada and supported the launch with posters and additional point of sale materials - we will let you know progress on that initiative in the coming months.

Forthcoming will be a big push on tip-on promotions. Mini cook-books have been a popular choice and we will also be jointly promoting selected titles with a Harlequin Mills & Boon to increase sales before the end of 2009. Additionally we have the Harper's Bazaar and Dolly tip-ons as mentioned above.

2010 is going to be a busy year for focusing our marketing efforts. We are keen to gather your feedback on the ‘Buy Australian Magazine' promotion we ran earlier in the year so we can replicate this promotion with even more success and ensure great sales results. We aim to run this campaign in March 2010.

We are also aiming to target selected retailing outlets and chains in each region. Retailers in our sights include Borders, airport retailers, Jashanmal (Dubai airport), Kinokuniya and Eslite (Taiwan), Cold Storage and Harris (Singapore) to name a few. If you can provide feedback for us on where we should focus our efforts we would certainly like to hear from you.

Andrew's visit to Phoenix

Distripress 2009

Distripress is always a great experience for anybody who works in the industry. You spend weeks preparing, you survive international air travel, you land, you get in a cab, you arrive at the hotel and then 24 hours later you settle down.

The first official function is always the welcome party held on the Sunday evening. In the past we have been to castles, into the desert, visited palaces and spent time in the rain. This year we went to a ranch! The best news being that it was only a 15 minute bus journey, as opposed to Istanbul where it took two hours each way!

I always enjoy the welcome party. You see everybody you are going to meet during the week. You consume food and lots of soft drink. You end up talking about business ideas before you have the meeting then head home (or go to the bar) and wake up and wait till 11am on Monday when the doors open and the day starts.

Monday - We kicked off with a get together with Tom and Gus from CircOne. General discussions centred around how to improve sales in the US and retail chains that we could open up for export of Australian titles. It was interesting to have this discussion as we spent a few hours on the previous weekend looking at stores in LA and noticed opportunities a plenty.

Erol and Matt joined us at 11:30am and we had a chat about the Japanese market. Suffice to say - DIP have supported 8Pt since both our launch and their launch and hence our plans are mutually inclusive for future development in this market. New orders were also placed - Thanks Erol.

We had lunch with Richard Tan and got straight back into it meeting with Justine and Francesca from Universal News and SpeedImpex USA respectively. We set marketing plans for the ACP brands supplied into the NYC stores and also the launch of Acclaim, Street Lifestyle Magazine.

Butch and Luisa visited our table at 3pm and we had a great talk about the expansion to date in South Africa, the forthcoming football World Cup in June 2010 and the cricket! MCS Caxton has been wonderful supporters of Eight Point and their tireless efforts are starting to show dividends in both sales and retail expansion. As always John and Butch had a good old chat about everything except work!

Following this we headed over to Ezra and Judo's table and were (to use an Aussie vernacular) blown away by the sales results that we are achieving in the Indonesian market. YOY growth is strong (double digit strong), despite recent terrorist activity, and our plans for the marketing of all brands through Jakarta and Bali are about to unfold.

Durga, Shonee and Lal then entertained us at their table for the final hour of the Monday session. Thank you sincerely to our friends at Far East Media (FEM) who also introduced us to Linda for potential distribution in Australia of her art title. As always the humor was endless and FEM's friendship and support is most appreciated. We couldn't have achieved the results in Hong Kong without Shonee's support and her team, especially Karen.

Monday evening was quiet (it's good to be tea total these days!).

First up Tuesday we sat with Robert (that would be Bob) from Asia Books who perform all our distribution in Thailand. Sales are strong, promotional plans are afoot and new orders were placed. We then headed to our long session (3 hours) with our great pals from the SpeedImpex group. Alberto, Eugenio, Greg, Francesca, Karen, Maria, Stefano G. and Stefano S have been great supporters of our business launch since the start of 2009 and we later finished the evening with them at a wonderful dinner out at Camelback singing Frank Sinatra songs all the way home.

On a side note we will forever be indebted to Stefano Scubbia for allowing Eight Point to utilize the warehouse facilities in Sydney via his company Europress Distributors. Stefano, you hold tremendous respect in our hearts.

Our Brazilian, Canadian, European and American partners have allowed Eight Point to test, trial and develop in these respective markets. We have great plans for sales development which will be launched in Canada and the US shortly with major inroads made across Europe via SASS.

We had lunch (second day in a row) with Richard Tan of Allscript - and yes we had an American lunch again, including another enormous Coca Cola!

After lunch I enjoyed chatting with Geoff and Dee from Kable and we have agreed to launch a major strategy in Australia for development of the art titles they manage ex US. Thanks Geoff - this is sensational news and we were chuffed. We hope that we have proved that Eight Point will work tirelessly to grow sales of Kable News titles in Australia outside of the traditional newsagency channel.

Karl, Rania and Maissa from Levant International visited our table at 3pm. We missed Tiffany and wish her all the best with her pregnancy. Another great meeting with major plans confirmed to promote all brands through Dubai airport and launch potentially into India. As an FYI - Eight Point trade via Levant into Abu Dhabi, Cyprus, Dubai, Kuwait, Lebanon and Turkey.

TC (Tony Campbell) from G&G NZ popped over. We didn't talk work - we talked about all our mates - Anton, Browny and the like!

Our second last meeting of the day was with Doreen and Bettina and we again confirmed our ongoing plans to grow, launch and test all our initiatives in Singapore. We also discussed the ongoing parallel importing of Australian titles into Singapore.

Last, but definitely not least, Mr. Steve Hobbs popped by. Apart from talking football we decided to have a look at the UK market and deduce where we can launch/test and grow - more details as they come to hand. We finished the chat with a bet about football!

Back to the hotel, a quick club soda in the bar and then out for dinner to PF Chang's with my friends from Speedy! Sensational night - good company, food was fine (but Sydney's Chinese restaurants are much better), the wine flowed and our driver, who bought us home, got a $40 tip for his outstanding customer service. Only Alberto, Andrew, Francesca and Stefano G. know what I am talking about! Bring on "Old Blue Eyes"

Up early again Wednesday - no hangover and feeling as fresh as a bell. John left to go to Memphis to visit Elvis and I met with Roy from Source Interlink for a general chat, then Genevieve from G&G Aus popped over for a catch up on some domestic stuff in Australia that I look after. Tony E. and Jenni entertained me for 30 mins to discuss options ex NZ via Netlink. Richard H., who used to work for Odyssey, and now works for MMC, had 30 minutes at our table and I finished my Distripress 2009 having more American food with Kevin Stevens from Woodland Freight.

4pm - Back to the hotel, early night and then my best mate from Australia Matt Spence picked me up bright and early Thursday morning and we went to Vegas...


Spotlight on South Africa

Stats on the recent ABCs

Thanks to Luisa and Butch from MCS Caxton for sending us the latest facts and figures about magazine retailing in South Africa. Some highlight data includes -

The top 3 categories of sales are in the areas of

  • Business & News - 26%
  • Sport & hobbies - 16%
  • Female interest - 12%

The top titles by annual sales volume are

  • Newsweek
  • New African
  • OK Weekly
  • National Geographic
  • Goodie Bag Mag
  • Peoples Friend
  • Focus on Africa
  • The Africa Report
  • African Business
  • Art & Decoration

Top 5 Eight Point titles

  • Australian House & Garden
  • The Australian Women's Weekly
  • Belle
  • Australian Gourmet Traveller
  • Harper's BAZAAR (Australia)
  • (The Lovatt's range deserves a special mention here as they come very close 6th with a vast range of titles too!)

We are delighted to hear that the appetite for international magazines in South Africa is forecast to continue in 2010, with increased sales of existing titles and a window of opportunity for expansion for new titles.


Photos from Singapore

Harlequin Mills & Boon (HMB) stands

We have been working closely with HMB and our customers in Singapore to promote the large range of book titles and how best to present the range in-store. The result has been the manufacture of some circular free standing carousels that hold a complete range of titles. The photos here show how great they look! If you think this display would work with your retailers please let us know - we'd be happy to work with you to implement the same or similar display.


Supplier News

As always, and we all know this, we cannot exist without our suppliers. After our visit to Distripress 2009 we are most excited about the plans that we have for further expansion of the ACP Magazines range. Sales are strong and new orders are flowing through the system. ACP continues to re-invest in their brands and this will benefit us all. Free gifts, new opportunities, oneshot spin-offs and marketing will compliment all our efforts in 2010. Please stay focused and continue to review the brochure we handed to you at Distripress to ensure that the "right magazines, are in the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity…for the consumer".

We have exciting plans for expansion of Acclaim, Street Lifestyle Magazine in the US and we are also distributing Andrew Montell's magazine into clothing stores throughout Australia.

In the crossword and puzzle market we continue to make great leaps forward with the Lovatt's and Puzzler Media ranges. Expansion of the Lovatt's Range has occurred throughout the Asia Pacific region and also through the UAE. Puzzler Media continues to carve out a market in the US for two selected titles.

Marni Williams of Art & Australia has given Eight Point the green light for export into Asia; We continue to grow both Australian Classic Car and Way2Go for the NRMA; Clean Organic food has been secured for export with issue #2 and possible expansion into Canada; Graeme has just delivered our second issue of Collecting Bears & Dolls (FA please note!); We have exported two issues of Contact, Air, Land & Sea with Brian's help; Dorothy, Angela and Steph are always a joy to visit at DMAG and our domestic consultancy and export relationship are most fulfilling.

Our first issue of Insight was packed on Monday October 19th. We have new orders for Jeep Action, Oxygen, Ultrafit, Performance Ford, Performance Holden and Post Modern Ink - Thanks to all our friends for their support. Note we also have an order to distribute Post Modern Ink into Culture + Shop + Gallery in Australia! (A major coup for Eight Point Distribution).

Recipes+ is growing each month and "Franklin" seems pretty happy with the result - his last comment to me was - "good on ya Android!". Tarmac is scheduled for distribution of our fourth issue shortly and Daniel has supported us with two issues of Wild Deer & Hunting Adventures. Danielle Tan at Your Investment Property also placed faith in Eight Point with her October issue launched into Asia.

Finally, thanks to Cheryl at Newsweek in Singapore for your ongoing support; We always toast (no pun intended) the two Peter's at Winestate and my meetings with Marijcke at Popular Science and Science Illustrated are always refreshing and innovative.

Again, three cheers to our suppliers from Andrew, Bruna, Caroline, Dawn, George, Greg, John, Peter, Sheree, Tanja and Tom. See you at the Christmas party!


Domestic distribution

Every month that I write this column our strength in domestic distribution continues to grow. Today we represent all the titles from Indesign. We have secured the Architecture Media range. Kable News Co. has chosen to support us for US titles and Elaine from Art Asia Pacific has given us the green light as well.

We welcome Katherine and Zoe - first time publishers of 'Sculpture + the enemies'. The girls have put their life and soul into the first issue and we are proud to say that our friends in the retail world are supporting us.

We now service over 60 specialty art gallery bookstores and high street booksellers. Sheree has done a fantastic job in developing relationships with all our customers. If you add the dozen or so clothing stores we distribute to then our little domestic distribution business, that was only 20 outlets in January, is now three and a half fold bigger! Imagine our size by the end of 2010 - Look out G&G! (only kidding Craig).