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Welsh dailies abandon city centre street sales

Two of the biggest daily newspapers in Wales have announced they are abandoning street sales.

Media Wales, publisher of the Western Mail and South Wales Echo, will now longer employ newspaper vendors in Cardiff city centre.

Seven jobs are at risk as a result of the move by the Trinity Mirror-owned company, which was announced in an internal memo seen by HTFP.

It pointed to a “continuing downward trend” in street sales which showed no signs of improvement in the future.

The memo by newspaper sales manager Mike Packwoood stated:  “As part of a review of the efficiency of its newspaper sales strategy, Media Wales has assessed the effectiveness of its Cardiff city centre newspaper vendors operation.

“One of our key challenges in the present economic environment is to operate in the most cost effective way and it now costs us more to run our city centre vending team than is generated in profit by this approach.

“These factors mean that we have to continually review our operations and search for ways of being more competitive and for more efficient ways of working to reduce costs.

“For Newspaper Sales, one of the outcomes of the current challenging trading environment is a significant and continual downward trend in sales from our city centre vending team.  This decline has been ongoing for a long period of time and we do not see any indication that the city centre vending sale will improve in the future.

“As a result we have reviewed our city centre vending operation and it has been proposed that we cease our city centre function with immediate effect.

“The review has also considered the most efficient way of managing and communicating with our retailers and determined that the most cost effective way to proceed is through the sole use of the merchandising team.

“Subsequently we propose that there will be no further requirement for the role of retail representative in the future structure.

“As such, all of the city centre vending roles and the retail representative role have been placed at risk of redundancy and we have entered into a 30 day period of consultation with the relevant union representatives and each member of the team.”

A Media Wales spokesman added: “Media Wales has been reviewing the efficiency of its newspaper sales operation and exploring new methods to maximise sales opportunities and increase the profile and presence of its newspaper titles in Cardiff city centre.

“As a result, the company has announced proposals to cease the Cardiff city centre vendors operation with immediate effect and has entered into a period of consultation with the affected staff members.”

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  • July 4, 2011 at 11:05 am
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    Breathtaking. Print sales are declining all round – at least partly because of poorer distribution and the closure of newsagents – and now they decide deliberately to make it even harder to buy a newspaper. Noses, spite and faces spring to mind.

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