The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.

ArchiveFebruary 2018

Free small business POS software e-commerce workshops start today

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How to win new customers and increase revenue with a POS software connected website for your type of business

At this practical, jargon-free, workshop we will show through, several live case-studies, the value of a POS software connected website. We will:·

  1. Show how a good website / POS solution can land more shoppers in your physical shop, more than you think, and help you sell 24/7.·
  2. Explain how to get to the top Google results, and stay there
  3. Share how a website we launched a year ago did more than $500,000 in sales. We will unpack for you everything we did to drive success.
  4. Compare Shopify / WooCommerce and Magento and explain why each is good in their own right.
  5. Share practical experience on order fulfilment using Australia Post and others and how to handle freight costs.
  6. Explain payment options and how to leverage them for more sales.
  7. Demonstrate the commercial value of the right POS software / website connection.·
  8. Explain photos, descriptions and other things, day to day things, which web developers often miss.·
  9. Answer all your questions.

The knowledge we will share will enable you to compete better online and in-store. Click on your preferred city location to book now.

  1. MELBOURNE: Feb. 28, 10am @ Pullman Hotel East Melbourne
  2. HOBART: Mar. 1, 10am @ Rydges Hobart.
  3. BRISBANE: Mar. 2, 9am @ RiverView Hotel, Kingsford Smith Drive.
  4. ADELAIDE: Mar. 7, 10am @ Rydges South Park
  5. PERTH: Mar. 8, 10am @ Crown Towers.
  6. SYDNEY: Mar. 9. 10am Sydney Hilton, George Street. Level 1.

We are inviting any retailer in the channels in which we serve with POS software for that channel: giftsjewellersbikestoysfishing/outdoorsgarden centrespet shopsproducefirearms, adult shops and newsagents.

If you are actively in the market for new POS software and / or a website for your business, we would consider flying you in for one of these workshops at no cost to you.

To qualify for a free flight, drop us a line at sales@towersystems.com.au and one of our expert account managers will have a chat with you.

In addition to owning Tower Systems, we also own and operate retail businesses and through these seven different public-facing websites.

This practical session leverages our personal web connected retailer experience to help you navigate in-store and online opportunities. I promise, it will not be death by PowerPoint. Rather, the focus will be on real examples, live examples, as they will be more valuable to providing understanding.

Here’s our stand at the Sydney Gift Fair

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We are loving the location we have at the Sydney Gift Fair, the space, the openness. It allows a professional pitch to small business retailers. Plenty of people have been stopping by to talk and check out our software and discuss retail business websites.

With two days to go we are excited for the opportunity ties and the people we will meet.

This is a valuable event for us for reasons beyond connecting with prospective customers. We get to say g’day to existing customers and talk with suppliers. The trade show works on a range of levels.

We love it and are grateful for the opportunity.

We are loving the Sydney Gift Fair

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This is proving to be a terrific show with wonderful new connections being made as well as reconnecting with existing customers.

We love our location in the Gift Fair. The first two days here have been terrific.

People are reacting well to our new POS software.

Yesterday, we figured this is our Twentieth Gift Fair. We are proud to be the most consistent POS software participant.

Tower Systems!

Finding optimism in small business retail

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Every day can be tough in small business. You can feel like the big competitors are winning and that you can’t climb the mountain to compete. You may not know where to start.

There are green shoots of good news and opportunities in every small and independent retail business. The key is to find these and to leverage them for more success.

A green shoot is a product or a category of products or a supplier performing above average in the business. Often, these successes have gone unnoticed.

We were working with a retailer recently who said business was down by 20% and they did not know what to do. It turned out that the best performing product category in their business was ‘failing’ for six months because they had not replenished stock.

They invested, instead, on new lines that had not gone as well as the successful product.

They, in part, created their own downward spiral and had not looked at their business data to understand that contributed to the problems they were confronting.

Once they realised the situation, they re-stocked the successful range of products and numbers started to improve. More important, their confidence level grew and with this their business decisions improved.

There are opportunities for optimism in every business.

Finding optimism is like mining, you have to look for it, sometimes for a long time. It is there, though, in every retail business.

As soon as you hear yourself talking your business down, STOP. Look at your data, look for the good news. That is what you need to think and talk about.

By looking at your data, we mean looking at year on year, quarter on quarter or month on month comparison data for departments, categories, suppliers or even individual products. Look for growth and once you see growth, think about what you can do with and around the products achieving growth so that you can achieve other growth.

Any product achieving year on year increases in unit sales is a product to be appreciated, nurtured and used to help grow other products that can sell to the same customer.

This is how you grow optimism. Find those small green shoots, leverage them with some small steps and, over time, build more success for your business.

While overall revenue, traffic count and profitability may be down, growth even at the smallest data point, such as for one or two products, could be enough to get you looking at your business differently.

In the Tower Systems POS software, the best initial reports for good news are: Monthly Sales Comparison (department level, category level and / or supplier level), the 10×10 Report, Ranked Sales Report (by units) for one period and then for the comparative period.

We’re here to help you find the good news in your business. Your business data is the key.

Software for adult shops makes running businesses easier

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The Tower Systems software for adult shops is designed to serve the needs of the retail businesses in this unique specialty retail channel.

Using our specialist retail software for adult shops, these businesses can easily handle:

  1. Age checking on sales.
  2. Product care instructions.
  3. Customer detail tracking where required.
  4. Discrete receipts.
  5. Gift purchase receipts.
  6. Gift vouchers enabling people to give a gift without being specific as to the purchase.
  7. Product swap out there a shopper returns an item for a part credit to the next item.
  8. Special orders.
  9. ordering based on what is selling. This need is different in adult shops compared to usual retail.
  10. LayBy.

Thanks to wonderful support from existing adult shop customers, Tower Systems is able to provide a wonderful solution that continues to evolve.

Warning to small business retailers: cheap hardware sucks!

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You get what you pay for when it comes to computer hardware.

Buy cheap and it will cost you the same or more over time than the quality, bran d name, hardware you may think is too expensive today.

It makes us sad when we see companies selling cheap hardware to retailers. Usually, this is hardware not suited to the job of robust retail. Sometimes, it is secondhand hardware refurbished to look new. Other times, it is hardware sold as X when, in fact, it is Y … slower, less capable.

Cheap hardware is cheap for a reason. Corners have been cut on quality, speed, capacity or all three or a mixture thereof. It is cheap for a reason.

Cheap hardware is false economy, a poor business decision.

Too often we see small business retailers ripped off by slick sales people who spin and spin and quickly confuse retailers into buying what they think is a quality ideal solution when, in fact, it is a cheap and inappropriate solution.

Cheap hardware sucks. It is not cheap in the long run for a business.

Here at Tower Systems, our hardware is more expensive. For computers, we use HP, Hewlett Packard. High quality. backed by an on-site warranty. Fast. We use it ourselves, in our businesses.

Buyer beware is the best advice anyone can give when it comes to buying hardware for your retail business.

How one Australian retail business added $25,000 in revenue in six months, from customers they never met

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Tower Systems helped one small Australian business add $25,000 in revenue in the back half of 2017 through online sales to shoppers who ever set foot in the business.

The business was already using the Tower Systems POS software. They hooked up to one of our pub lic websites, which took seconds. Pretty soon the sales started rolling in.

$25,000 in incremental business at 50% GP. Some of those shoppers have developed a relationship with the business for on-going purchases.

Yes, any business can increase online sales, especially in the hours the business is closed.

  1. Transacting is easy.
  2. Handling freight is simple.
  3. Paperwork is a breeze.
  4. Maintaining a single and accurate inventory record is a dream.
  5. Fulfilment is structured, accurate and takes no time.
  6. Increasing the return on inventory investment is loved.
  7. It makes the business more valuable.

As retailers ourselves we understand the value of a POS software connected website. We bring this knowledge from our retail experience to play in our POS software development work. This is another way we are different to other POS software companies.

Turning on retailers to web offerings is easy for us as we are a one stop shop in this area. It is part of a suite of in-store and online solutions we offer retailers to help them achieve greater business success.

7 reasons Australian retailers should have their websites developed in Australia

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While there are many reasons Australian retail businesses child have websites developed in Australia by Australian developer companies, here are the top reasons.

  1. Local knowledge. Understanding how retail is transacted is Australia is vital. From the terms used to the local Aussie style. There are often disconnects when offshore web developers are used and they do not understand Australian nuances.
  2. Easy local access. Being able to talk with a web developer during your office hours and even face to face are factors key to successful website deployment.
  3. Appropriate design. There is an extraordinary difference in the design aesthetic from an Australian designer to an offshore one. By design, we mean the look and feel. You want a website that accurately reflect your business, the look and feel of your business as you see it.
  4. Collaboration. Thanks to easy local Aussie access you can collaborate along the way. With an offshore solution language and other factors make collaboration challenging.
  5. Flexibility. Working with a local web developer you are dealing with a one stop shop. With offshore developers there is often an Australian front business. They translate your requirements. Too often, things are lost in translation.
  6. Tweaking. Once you go live you will want to tweak the site. With offshore developers this is hard because contracts are usually fixed or, sometimes, the company disappears. They are cheap for a reason.
  7. Local jobs. If yours is a local retail business and you want people to shop local to support the local economy. Do it yourself. lead by example.

There are many more reasons. While there is o doubt that offshore web development is cheaper, often that turns out to be false economy.

Tower Systems offers wonderful POS software for speciality retailers from ur POS division and beautiful Aussie developed websites from ur web division.

As an Australian POS software company, we are proud to serve in excess of 3,500 Aussie independent small retail businesses across a range of retail channels. Through our work, we help local Aussie businesses grow and become stronger. This is central to our mission. We believe in small business and Aussie small business especially.

GARDEN CENTRE SPECIFIC FACILITIES IN THE TOWER GARDEN CENTRE SOFTWARE HELP YOU BETTER LEVERAGE YOUR POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

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Every day is a battle in independent small business, especially where you have a giant of a competitor outspending you on advertising. This is so true in the garden centre space.

We think the best way for any independent garden centre to compete is to leverage your points of difference, at every opportunity.

Software from Tower Systems has facilities designed specifically for garden centres, to enable them to do this, to leverage their point of difference at each touchpoint.

This non-tech article outlines these facilities. It represents business level advice we provide to garden centre owners and managers using our software. It reflects advice in addition to comprehensive technical advice, help and training on our software.

We believe that the more you leverage the specialisation in your business the more you differentiate your business from big business competitors. We are in an era where specialisation matters in businesses like yours, and ours.

  1. Special customer orders. This is the ability to order stock from a supplier for a specific customer. On arrival of the stock item, a barcode is printed with the customer name, for placement on to the product. The software can be set to send an alert to the customer by text or email, advising the arrival of the goods into the store. Customers love this personalisation. Better still, pitch an offer to customers prior to ordering from suppliers. Pre-sell. Get a non-refundable deposit. Then place your order.
  2. Share knowledge. On receipts and other touchpoint documents, include local knowledge by product or generally that shows your business as being expert. The more you do this, the more you share knowledge about garden care in your local area, the more you differentiate your business.
  3. Make what you sell. Using the manufactured goods facilities in the software it is easy to make goods. For example, you might put together a plant, a pot and a bag of nutrients as a pack. This is your pack, only available from you. It is easy to setup, sell and manage. This is a valuable point of difference.
  4. Reward your regular shoppers with a coffee card type offer. For example, buy ten plants priced at $15.00 or more and get the 11th plant for free. The software can track the purchases, ensuring your shoppers get their reward if they buy within the rules you establish.
  5. Club / community group deals / pricing. A great way to win new shoppers is through a community group. You can publish a card or voucher enabling members of a group to present this for a discount on each purchase. The software can track the purchases and at a designated time you can give the group a rebate in return for their member loyalty. Consider being flexible of what constitutes a club. It could be that people who like to fish with a particular person are in a ‘club’. The more groups and people you have talking about your business the better.
  6. Instant loyalty rewards. Another way we can help maximise sales is with an instant loyalty reward. This is particularly useful where you see shoppers once a year or quite infrequently as is often the case in fishing and outdoor businesses. Using rules that you control, a receipt can include a voucher offering a specific amount off the next purchase if that purchase is made in a timeframe you set. An average 19% redemption rate for the vouchers with a third redeemed the day of purchase. Male shoppers are far more likely to redeem the day of purchase. This instant loyalty reward facility is another way we serve your type of business. In the software, we call it discount vouchers.
  7. Easily create a quote based on what a customer wants. If they decide to proceed, the quote can be actioned quickly and easily.
  8. Hazardous goods. Include appropriate warnings on documents provided with hazardous goods for the protection of your customers and your business.
  9. As plants in-store grow, report them and increase their sale price.
  10. Label for outdoors. Using our weatherproof labels, confidently label products out on the lot so they can be scanned regardless of weather conditions.
  11. Leverage events. Using this new facility, added Q1 2018, you can market to shoppers based on interests, past purchases, birthdays and other date related events in and around their lives. For example, you could run an email campaign for all who purchased a particular type of plant and offer advice on seasonal care to local conditions.
  12. Sell by weight. This is easy and accurate.
  13. Your marketing group or product suppliers can provide data files for any catalogues in which you participate. You can load these into the software making it easy to offer catalogue prices through the term of the catalogue offer.
  14. Gift vouchers. Sell customers who can’t decide what gift to purchase a gift voucher. Load on to this voucher any amount the customer wants. You set the rules on expiry and other voucher handling.
  15. Supplier comparison. Since you can purchase some items from multiple suppliers, use smart reports in the software to compare the performance of your various suppliers.
  16. Integrated in retailer is this buy now pay later finance option. You are settled quickly by the funder and the costs are like credit card costs. This can work better than LayBy in that you do not need to manage the goods in-store.
  17. You have complete control over how this is setup including the terms, rules and more.
  18. Manage remotely. Plenty of our business owners are not in their businesses regularly. Our software has facilities that enable easy remote tracking and management. Some are obvious while others are hidden and secure, giving you peace of mind that you can leave your business.

POS software touch points help small business retailers benefit

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Tower Systems provides these touch point services to all retailers using its Australian designed POS software. They are services we have found small business retailers appreciate and enjoy. These services are provided at no additional cost:

  1. Small Business Support. Through a range of creative and management services we help small business in myriad ways including marketing, supporter, planning and more. Our experience in a range of retail channels, including as owing small business retail shops ourselves, positions us to offer these pro bono services to help.
  2. Theft check. A business data assessment and analysis to determine if employee theft is occurring in the business. We have people who have been used by police and prosecutors to testify as expert witnesses in successful prosecutions.
  3. Business check. One of our senior analysts researches the data being cultivated by the software for the business. A report is prepared on what can be seen in the data. The goal of this assessment is to provide insights the retailer might otherwise not have seen for themselves.
  4. User meetings. We host two cycles of user meetings each year – in the first and second half of the year. These are in capital cities and major regional centres. The user meetings provide free training and an open Q&A session. They are always attended by senior management from Tower Systems.
  5. Online training workshops. These are held for all Tower customers. Access is free. They can connect and participate from anywhere in the world.
  6. Tower Systems has a structured approach to escalation of any issue about which a customer may be unhappy. This facilitates getting the issue outside the help desk and in front of the leadership team for more independent assessment.
  7. Supplier engagement. Tower Systems has a structured approach to working with suppliers to facilitate seamless connection when it comes to business data. This process sees many suppliers already participating.
  8. One-on-one training. Up to two hours of personal individual training each year.

Tower Systems is grateful to the support of its 3,500+ customers that enable it is provide these and other services in support of small business retailers. This is what we do. We love it!

Free training for small business POS software customers

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Australian POS software company Tower Systems offers unlimited personal, one or one, training for small business retailers using its software.

Months after the system is installed, customers can contact the Tower team and request more training and it is scheduled. The training is tailored to the specific needs of each business. It can be structured or simply follow a Q&A approach. The customer is always in control.

By not limiting training, Tower Systems gives customers complete control over how well they know the software and through this the benefits they leverage from use of the software.

This personal one-on-one training is delivered by someone from within the company, someone Australian based, someone with excellent product knowledge. Yes, the company takes the provision of additional training seriously because we know the benefits for our customers and for us.

Access to training is something small business retailers should assess when they compare POS software companies. They should look at the training, engage with us and add an assessment of this to their assessment of the appropriateness of the software and the software company as partners for their business.

In addition to the free personal training provided by Tower Systems, the company also hosts weekly group training workshops as well as other training opportunities.

On top of the personal training and group training workshops, the company also provides access to written and video training materials. These can be accessed 24/7, online, through our customer service portal, a comprehensive suite of facilities that help small business retailers learn at their own pace and to the needs of their specific businesses.

Training is important. We think too many POS software companies promote but do not deliver. Here at Tower we deliver because we are retailers too, owning shops where our software is used. This experience in retail helps us provide better service more attuned to users rather than the POS software company.

So, look at our POS software training, check it out, use it as a point of reference when considering the POS software for your business. We’re here to help. Were take our motto seriously, every day.

Bike shop software best for independent bike shops

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More than 200 bike retail businesses use the specialist bike shop software from Australian POS software co. Tower Systems. This makes the Tower Bike Shop Software the most widely used software in this specialist retail channel.

Just as someone buying a bike is best to turn to an expert, so to should a bike shop owner looking for bike shop software turn to an expert.

The best way to assess a bike shop software package is during a demonstration live for your business, based on your specific needs. It is this in-store presentation and after-purchase training that bike shop owners and employees love about Tower Systems.

To consider the Tower Bike Shop Software for your business, call one of our account managers and they will arrange a personal face-to-face demonstration where you can have your questions answered and where you can see the software for yourself in your own situation.

Bike retailers love the Tower Bike Shop Software for many reasons:

  1. It is software designed specifically for bike retailers.
  2. Includes bike workshop management facilities.
  3. Excellent shopper loyalty facilities with four different loyalty approaches available.
  4. Regularly updated software. You choose when you update – to suit your business.
  5. Software enhancements based on bike shop user suggestions.
  6. Live in-store face-to-face training.
  7. More than 130 training videos for refresher training.
  8. Live help desk support where you talk to a human on the phone. No faceless email type support here.
  9. Electronic invoice and stock file connections with bike shop suppliers.
  10. Free weekly online user workshops for bike shop owners and staff offering group training and networking opportunities.
  11. Large user community. More users = more value for you.
  12. Australian made.

No matter what size your bike shop, this software is certain to be ideal given that it’s already in use in large and small bike retail businesses.

Our latest release of our bike shop software is this week, February 2018. It is wonderful fresh software packed with benefits bike retailers will love.

Any of our specialist Bike Shop Software account managers at Tower Systems can connect you with a user near you who can share their experiences.

Read more at www.towersystems.com.au.

Small business retailers love discount vouchers

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Tower Systems has been a champion of discount vouchers for years. From launch to regular innovation, the benefits delivered have been valuable for small business retailers.

Through our work with the newsXpress gift, toy and newsagency marketing group we have produced channel-speficvi training. Here is a new video we shot last week outlining the benefits of discount vouchers from a business owner perspective. We share it here today to shine a light on the business support and management resources we produce for customers.

Software for jewellers: Helping you help the Franks of the world express their love, on time.

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Helping you help the Franks of the world express their love, on time.

Frank got to the shop just before closing, in time to purchase a beautiful necklace as a gift for his wife for their seventh wedding anniversary. Talking about this at the counter, we explained how we could remind him next year so there was no last-minute rush.  Frank was thrilled.

Fast forward eleven months and Frank was in with two weeks to spare. He brought with him the voucher we sent as an early bird purchase encouragement. He spent $350.00 with us on another anniversary gift, bagging a $25.00 discount. Frank also told us about his daughter who had been born two months earlier. We asked for her birthday so we could remind him about that. “As long as you send me another voucher”, he joked. We will. 

Reminding shoppers of gift buying opportunities is valuable for independent retail businesses. Doing this with thoughtfully tuned email or mail communications and including an offer can enhance the response rate.

These marketing tools are part of a range of jeweller specific marketing and management facilities in the jeweller software developed and supported by Tower Systems in Australia.

Another way we help maximise sales is with an instant loyalty reward. This is particularly useful where you see shoppers infrequently, like for anniversary gifts. Using rules you control, a receipt can include a reward offering an amount off the next purchase.

An average 19% redemption rate for the vouchers with a third redeemed the day of purchase. Male shoppers are far more likely to redeem the day of purchase. Frank will attest to that.

The instant loyalty reward can also work with a point based program for more regular shoppers too, helping them spend more with you.

Our jeweller specific software also offers:

  • Bundle pricing where you sell several items together. For example, matching earrings and a necklace or a bracelet and a necklace.
  • Including care instructions on receipts.
  • Smart reporting. The most important competitor is your own business. Our software makes it easy for you to compare month on month, year on year, by category, supplier and more.
  • Multibuy pricing where people purchase over time and receive a free item. This works particularly well as people build a collection.
  • Theft mitigation. We help you protect your business against employee and shopper theft.
  • Managing repairs, regardless of whether you do them in-store or not.
  • Easy loading of electronic invoices from your suppliers.
  • Linking to a website for online sales.
  • Linking to Xero to cut bookkeeping and external accounting costs.

See the software live. Contact us for an obligation free demonstration: Please call our sales team at 1300 662 957 or email them at sales@towersystems.com.au.

This software is affordable. You can purchase the software outright, lease it or rent it. You can use it in your business loaded on local computers or in the cloud. How you purchase and access the software is 100% up to you.

Supported by humans, in Australia. Our help desk is in Hawthorn, Victoria. Everyone who works on the help desk has experience in retail. To access the help desk you can call, email, post a Facebook message Tweet or text us.

Training is personal. We come to your business and train you in the software. The training is tailored to your specific needs. Like I said, training is personal. Long after we install, you have access to one on one training, at no additional cost.

Previewing 2018 at our small business POS software co

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We appreciate the feedback from our POS software user customers about the preview we provided to the year in this video we shot in house. In addition to introducing some tech innovation coming early this year, the video  also reflects our human and personal approach to software development, it underscores that we stand behind what we sell.

Twenty new knowledge base articles help POS software users

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Tower Systems continues to add knowledge base articles to the 700+ articles in our live 24/7 access knowledge base that helps our users get more from our POS software.

Here are the most recent topics covered in new articles we have published for our customers:

  1. BOGO – Buy One Get One Free
  2. Day of Week Report
  3. Daily Takings Report
  4. Weekly Takings Report
  5. Monthly Takings Report
  6. Detailed Takings Report
  7. Enabling POS Tracking
  8. POS Tracking Report
  9. Weekly Magazine Decay Report
  10. Sales By Customer
  11. Supplier Listing Report
  12. Sales Target Report
  13. Layby Report
  14. Department Listing Report
  15. Category Performance Report
  16. Detailed Performance Report
  17. Customer Listing Report
  18. Pack Units Report
  19. Sales Profitability Report
  20. Discount Types Report

We are grateful to our customers for feedback on articles they like and articles we can improve.

Helping newsagents transform their businesses

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newsXpress, a newsagency marketing group with which we are connected, invites newsagents from across Australia to free management workshops. We also offer to fund air travel for newsagents to ensure easy access to this important event.

Hear how newsagents are transforming their businesses, finding new customers, enjoying a new lease on life. We will share case studies from city and country newsagencies.

  1. See new, exclusive, product that is attracting new shoppers, product you have never seen at a gift fair or trade show before.
  2. See greeting cards not available in any other newsagency, greeting cards that appeal to shoppers beyond the usual caption range in Australia.
  3. See the evidence of success of the newsXpress multi-site web strategy that is driving online as well as in-store sales. We will share the latest sales data.
  4. See the newsXpress P&L – demonstrating transparency.

Here are the only dates in this series. Please tick your selection.

  • ADELAIDE: 5th Feb, 10am @ Rydges South Park, 1 South Terrace SA 5000
  • SYDNEY: 6th Feb, 10am @ Hilton Sydney, 448 George St Sydney NSW 2000
  • BRISBANE: 7th Feb, 10am @ Brisbane Riverview Hotel, Kingsford Smith Dr,
  • PERTH: 8th Feb, 10am @ Parmelia Hilton Perth, 14 Miller St Perth WA 6000
  • MELBOURNE: 9th Feb, 10am @ Grace Park Hawthorn Club, 6 Hilda Crescent

I am posting this here as I am a director of newsXpress and will be hosting each workshop.

Book by emailing help@newsxpress.com.au or by using the booking form.

If you have any questions, call me – 0418 321 338.

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