The Saddest Little Magazine Rack

This just in from a West Coast correspondent:

There's no way to prettify that.... This rack is located in a store in Northern California and despite its small size, if it looks this bare now, perhaps it sold a decent amount of product when it was serviced. Over the past few weeks, I've found it easy to be caught up in the moment. After all we're busy with all of this. The bigger retailers are signing up with the remaining wholesalers at a fast pace. Service seems to be getting restored quickly to the major chains. It looks like over 70% of Source's retailer base is now signed with a new wholesaler. I've seen some excellent work from my national distributors when it comes to figuring out how to get the distributions and copies transferred accurately. But let's not kid ourselves. Accounts were not serviced. For several weeks. If you don't refresh your product, it gets stale. The formula is very simple:

No fresh product=No sales=no revenue

Selling magazines is not like selling a eight-pack of brand name bath tissue. It's more like selling fresh endive. People have to see it, want it, justify that want, then pick it up. You need toilet paper. You may need fresh vegetables, but you have to want endive. Leave it on the rack too long, it's not going to be pretty. The people in our industry have performed some great work over the past few weeks under some very difficult circumstances. Anyone who has witnessed this should be impressed. But let's not forget why our colleagues have had to work so hard in the first place. And let's get some fresh magazines onto that sad little rack.