NICK KRAUSE in The Dominion Post - 16/09/2011
The new owner of bookstore chain Whitcoulls has defended its move to exit a retail sales data panel that monitors what books are selling and at what price.Whitcoulls is the largest of the panel members which includes Paper Plus, Dymocks, KMart, The Warehouse, LS Travel Retail and independents.
BookScan was set up in New Zealand in 2007 and monitors consumer sales from retailers, providing detailed sales information on books sales and price.
Whitcoulls is believed to have 25-35 per cent of the retail market. The Pascoe Group, privately owned by Anne and David Norman, (pic left - Sarah Ivey), owns a number of other retail brands including Farmers department store. David Norman said it was a pity chief executive Ian Draper was taking flak from the industry for what was a group decision. "As market leaders in many retail areas we consider sell through details to be commercially sensitive," said Norman.
"This decision is not about books but rather protecting our investment in research, development and often taking a risk in stocking first to market product."
To give that sales data to an organisation that passes it on for a profit is "commercially dumb", he said.
"With particular reference to books, why should the bricks and mortar industry supply data to its online competition?" Norman said.
Ka Meechan, managing director Asia Pacific at Nielsen BookData, said Nielsen isn't allowed to comment on client's decisions.
The figures were widely used in the industry, said Hamish Wright, chairman of Booksellers New Zealand.
"They've become an important part of the whole data fabric of measuring and we don't have a full picture now and that's disturbing."
Tony Fisk, managing director of HarperCollins NZ and former Book Publishers Association president said it was "a great shame" but believed the data will still be valuable without Whitcoulls' input. "But it won't be as complete as we would like it to be."
Publishers Association president Kevin Chapman described it as a backwards step.
"The book industry in this country had no statistically valid sales data until just a few years ago," he said.
"It's no more than industry vandalism in that it's tearing something down that has been built up."
Former publisher and book awards judge Graham Beattie said Whitcoulls once commanded more than 50 per cent of retail book trade.
- BusinessDay.co.nz
4 comments:
David Norman says.
"This decision is not about books but rather protecting our investment in research, development and often taking a risk in stocking first to market product."
Norman has quite obviously very little knowledge of book retailing.Where is he going to source this new product that no-one else knows about
And if he is going to start stocking high risk product that other retailers are ignoring it would be a first for Whitcoulls.
He reminds me of Graham Hart who was going to turn bookselling on its head when he bought Whitcoulls and put the rest of the retail bookselling trade out of business.
We thought there might be some hope for Whitcoulls when Norman bought it.
If these statements are any indication of his future planning I am not so sure.
Mr.Norman might ponder how it is then that most other book retailers in most other countries participate?
He is clearly a successful general retailer but equally clearly the man has a lot to learn about the retail book business. If it is true that the decision to withdraw from BookScan was a "group one" then perhaps he should leave matters like this to his book trade experienced CEO? All in all a disappointing move by an industry heavyweight just when we were all hoping that the new owners might bring some stability.
We regularly get phone calls from people who have been incorrectly told by their local Whitcoulls shop that one of our titles is "out of print" -- which makes us wonder what other information Whitcoulls doesn't bother to use.
Perhaps when David Norman says "often" about "taking a risk in stocking first" he is referring to 'exclusives' (whereby underexcited sales managers might supply Whitcoulls or another sector with a new title some weeks before supplying the rest of the trade, and frankly, at not a lot of risk).
Perhaps David Norman thinks that the rest of the trade find out about these via the Nielsen figures?
Ian Draper would be aware that the rest of the trade usually knows sooner than that (leading to an increase in direct and parallel importing undertaken by we Indies).
The most credible use of the word "often" in reference to Whitcoulls is 'out of stock'. I won't go into their old practise of selling their non-promotional general books at prices higher than RRP (in which case the use of the word "often" is a possible understatement).
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