Pandemic Publishing Roundtable: One Source Magazine Wholesale - Front End Merchandising With a Twist
Article by Linda Ruth
Last week, at the Publishing Pandemic Roundtable—Bo Sacks, Gemma Peckham, Joe Berger, Samir Husni, Sherin Pierce, and me— spent our hour with Gregg Mason of One Source, the distributor to major Natural Food specialty retailers, discussing the unique nature of the One Source checkout program, the changes that the pandemic has brought, and what we might anticipate for 2021.
Joe: Can you give us some background on One Source and your role in the company?
Gregg: One Source is a traditional direct distributor, in that it orders its product from publishers and ships to one location for pick and pack. We service primarily the natural food segment, with close to 2000 retailers nationwide. Our largest chain is Whole Foods, with 500 stores, followed by Sprouts with 365 locations. We also service a small sports retail segment. One Source started small when the chains were small and grew along with them. Our approach to magazine merchandising is unique—we don’t have mainlines. We are front-end focused with pockets at the checkout-only, and with non-logo’d pockets. Without logos, it allows dynamic movement of magazines which caters to the impulse buy of shoppers. We can sell more of what sells and the fixture presentation changes often. When our retailers wanted a magazine program and looked at what traditional grocers had, they wanted something different, something fluid and dynamic. Something that would appeal to both new and returning customers; something that had the ability to drive high efficiencies. This fluid checkout was the solution.
Bo: Does the fluidity you exercise with different titles in the pockets create a better sell through?
Gregg: Having the titles move around drives greater sales and sell through as they do stay in store but get shifted. Older product moves down, newer product comes in at the top of the rack. Titles with enough product at release for two pockets consolidate down to one over time. In this way we can extend shelf life for high-selling magazines. Our best-selling regular-frequency titles are all either bi-monthlies or quarterlies, we’re able to give them their full on-sale period.
Joe: Traditional retail stores don’t always follow their so-called “fixed” planograms; you can spend a lot of money participating and find you’re not in the program you paid for. In the One Source program you have opportunity to show if you’re capable of performing; though, on the other hand, these efficiencies can regulate a title out in the end.
Gregg: Yes, it’s somewhat Darwinian; we look for not only high sell through but high sales per store. As draws come down, it’s hard to maintain the volume needed to stay in the stores, which can be frustrating to publishers. On the other hand, we don’t charge for the up-front placement; so if a title can perform, it will do well. For example, city titles can be the highest sellers in their home markets; so we created a city magazine placement at the front end. Recently the efficiency rates have come down somewhat with the shift to high-priced, low-frequency bookazines. It’s amazing how the migration from regular frequency magazines to the bookazine model has dominated the business direction. With high-frequency mags, a normal order regulation system works; but with bookazines, different topics on same bipad can have widely different sales. For every single bookazine we order, we create an individual distribution for it, from the ground up.
Joe: Isn’t that considered bipad packing?
Gregg: It would be in certain circumstances. What I’m referring to is a loose overarching editorial focus with different subjects under one brand. It’s literally a full-time job, managing these releases; but it’s necessary to garner volume sales.
Joe: What changes did you see as a result of the pandemic?
Gregg: We were lucky; our retailers stayed open. Sales were hit hard in the spring; since then it’s been a climb and partial recovery—creeping up, flattening out several times over. People have been gradually returning to more normal patterns. Our largest category is food and cooking; and those titles did well during the pandemic. We all cooked a lot more this year and turned to titles that can help. And publishers stuck with us. The children’s category, almost non-existent before the pandemic, took off like gangbusters. We found that the product couldn’t be too educational; it had to have a fun presentation. We partnered with a publisher who collaborated with PBS kid shows—the product was just educational enough, just fun enough. Also the Highlights bookazines were hugely successful. Shelter was a pleasant surprise. Domino took off, along with other shelter titles, primarily lower frequency titles and bookazines. One area that has continued to lag are the city titles. They have not come back yet. Our stores are firstly suburban, secondly urban, and the urban stores are slower coming back. The commuting stores that cater to the people who work in the area have yet to come back; the residential area stores have.
Joe: How are the indies and smaller chain stores doing?
Gregg: We service Fresh Market and Natural Grocers, 160 stores each, they carry narrow edit, mostly just food, cooking, and health. Because they’re primarily suburban, they came back pretty well. And the independents have very loyal customer bases, so they also held up well.
Sherin: Can you tell us a little more about Sprouts, what sells well?
Gregg: They are located overwhelmingly in California and throughout the southwest. Their shoppers tend to be more price-sensitive, although certain higher-priced titles do very well, such as Willow and Sage at $14.95. Sprouts also tends to do very well with the vegetarian and Vegan titles.
Sherin: What about getting their magazines on drop-down menus for online shopping?
Gregg: We’re exploring and looking to move in that direction.
Joe: MBR has started an initiative where they are talking to retailers about including magazines with electronic orders. You should be in that discussion. They’ve signed an agreement with an electronic platform, all the wholesalers should be at the table with this.
Bo: Home delivery is not going away. We’ve retrained the consumer on how to shop, and that’s going to continue. Magazines need to be involved in this system.
Gregg: Agreed, grocery was a last bastion of retail where people went to the store. Now many more people are getting delivery, and that won’t go away. And yet, although sales haven’t returned to where they were, they’re better than we expected, one year later. But you can’t make up for lost foot traffic.
Joe: How do we get people back into the stores, or encourage them to find and buy the magazines?
Gregg: We encourage our publishers to promote on their sites and social media platforms, to let them know we have their product, that it is available. In the stores, our biggest challenges are maintaining our pockets and keeping them open. The product that blocks the checkout are often at lower price points, lower profit. The migration to bookazines has helped show the financial impact of magazines, and what they bring to the retailer.
Sherin: The Old Farmer’s Almanac has listings online of where to buy; we have robust PR when we go on sale; and we provide floor displays to appeal to consumers.
Joe: What are you looking forward to in 2021?
Gregg: We’re hoping to avoid a repetition of 2020’s peaks and valleys—and that the distribution of the vaccine will get people back in the stores. We’re prepared for an uptick in the city stores. We’re poised to respond to changes as quickly as we can.