"The press needs a solid sales network"

 

The Act of July 5, 2011 amended the Act of April 2, 1947 Bichet governing the distribution of the press in France. The role of the Supreme Council of the Courier press is reinforced. Its decisions can now be enforced by the Regulatory Authority for the distribution of the press, newly created. To the President of the UNDP, which represents 30,000 newsagents, the way is thus open to the implementation of reforms, as the set.

LE FIGARO. – In the context of fierce competition between Presstalis and MLP, that becomes the sales network of the press?

Gerard Proust. – All the attention is currently focused on the situation of e-NMPP and custodians who act as wholesalers, because they structure the distribution of the press. Their business model is affected by the steady decline in sales. Presstalis responds by reforming its organization, but is being weakened by the departure of titles that will be distributed by mail MLP concurrent capable as appropriate to offer better rates. The trustees seek to rehabilitate their missions and resource to the new situation. But that does not detract from the urgency, at least, the situation of press merchants, who provide the relationship between supply of press and public.

Gerard Proust. – What makes you say that you forget to press the merchants?

When we deplore all the time the crisis of the press, and we do not get lost in the competition by explaining that the paper deliver new technology, we forget that it is primarily to closures of points -500 specialty sales per year! – we should lower the diffusion constant. There is no release that can stand well without a strong sales network. But yet we forget! His compensation is still insufficient to attract entrepreneurs and empower them to adapt to consumer expectations. I'm currently reading the proposals presented to the Superior Council, which suggest that the financial resources of the sector, now rare, be directed first to the other players. So I have every reason to fear we think too late to merchants when they are exhausted. I even saw that Stavros Dimas offer some burdens on traders, then we should be to alleviate the primary concern!

What is their situation?

They are not facing a crisis of paper seen by the overall maintenance of our turnover bookstore or card shop subject to the same competition from the Internet-but a crisis of the dispensing apparatus, which supplies the sales network so that it arrives in this double feat: distracting the consumer and discourage the merchant. Be aware: 60% of our supplies come away with unsold (it's more than half of the volumes delivered that do not meet the expectations of customers of the shop, who are squatting in blighted areas and that the merchant who monopolize would be better served to welcome and advise his client) and 20% of gaps in the sale (it's one in five who has not found among his dealer that he had come in search)! What a waste … Thus the turnover flexes for several years, as broadcasters abandon their profession, and that the sector is thereby destabilized the whole, with its greater risk. 

What are your recommendations?

There is no inevitability to the current situation of the press distribution, means rebound there, going through the procurement reform, for better consumer satisfaction, and improved compensation the merchant, to convince entrepreneurs to focus on our business. Must be provided at point of sale assortment of titles that meets customer expectations, we know such identification. This procurement method is practiced by all modern commercial networks, and even to sell the press in some European countries. It has been long and carefully defined and tested by the entire profession, before his deployment is blocked because he got obviously a handful of "editors" whose abuses led to the exhaustion I described the system.

This reform will suffice?

No! Soon, it will take to change the pay conditions of the merchants, always worse off when compared to their European counterparts, but also to other trade business. We must learn to lock onto them, because they are the ones that attract new entrepreneurs at the expense of being a merchant Press. It is they who come to occupy the commercial spaces, often the most prominent, as my colleagues leave vacant. When the publishing community is concerned about the turnaround of its sector, it must file the compensation of its sales network and not a priority, as I fear, a subject that "come after".

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