Achi news desk-
I was in a regional town in New Zealand at the weekend for a wedding and went to a local Paper Plus store to buy a wedding card. I didn’t like any of the wedding card designs they had, the variety felt tired, like the store.
This was my first time at Paper Plus in five years and as such it is what I will consider the standard for Paper Plus until I see something different.
The store fixtures were old school – traditional gondolas, tall with stacked products. There was no flair or allure to the retail displays, nothing to draw me into the store. The light was bright flor, which is now out of date for interesting local retail. There was no sense of being local.
Franchise businesses and businesses that trade under one roof are only as strong as their weakest store.
This is one of the reasons that newsXpress abandoned the requirement for businesses to trade under the newsXpress umbrella years ago. This is also why the team reworked its contract and its bid not to fall under the franchise’s code of conduct.
Local retailers need the freedom to flourish in ways that suit their local environment. In franchising it is challenging to do this because the franchising approach is about a cookie-cutter approach, based on what some call a ‘system’. I can’t think of any ‘system’ or franchise model that fits the news channel today. That’s my opinion at least, others will have their own.
Our channel is undergoing rapid change, much of which is outside the lines of what has traditionally been the business of new agencies. What attracted people to our businesses even five years ago has changed in 2024. Change is good because it opens up opportunities.
So much of the growth I see in new agency businesses emerging is non-traditional, which is where a franchise “system” or model created decades ago will struggle to be relevant. Retail in 2024 is irrelevant to what we did in 2000, 1990 or 1980. How, when and where people shop have changed. What people will buy from what used to be a traditional news agency has changed.
Local newsagents need the freedmen to be what they can be. This is why I switched from a franchise model years ago.
In the past, Paper Plus was a great business, a model of consistency and growth. If what I saw on Saturday is any indication, he has a long way to go to be relevant in 2024 – if not the team then certainly the store I visited.
I love owning and running my news office business today, for traditional products, but more for the opportunity to play outside the lines of tradition.
