Every six months Retail Newsagent publishes their indispensable magazine guide Bestsellers. They have improved their presentation in the last year or two and made the guide easier to use as an action tool – as well as storing all of the data online here. So how do we use it?

Our first task is to check on our own bestsellers and compare them with the national picture. We do this to understand how our customers buy magazines and to particularly understand where our sales are compared to the national picture. By comparing our strong categories with the guide we can soon see if there are opportunities available to us in the way of missing titles. Doing this for each category in a methodical way enables us to ensure our range remains relevant to our customers.

We have found around twenty titles to add to the range by looking through the feature and extending the search to the magazine sales data that is available on Smiths News customer website, Connect2U. Our top five sellers are somewhat different from the national picture, but as with our confectionery top sellers it reflects our customer demographics.

I will report back on how well the additions to the range perform in a couple of months.