Strachans is up for sale (click picture to enlarge), iright puts pen to paper, after wiping the breadcrumbs off his keyboard...'News that yet another Nairn high street business is up for sale may put another empty store on our shopping map. Strachans the towns biggest newsagent has announced that it is up for sale for the princely sum of £330.000
My perception as a customer has always been that this is a very busy store, with deep queues at weekends as folk buy their papers and then flit across the road for their rolls from Ashers.
Strachans has a good selection goods other than newsprint, books, magazines and stationary, the nearest such items are available outwith Nairn would probably mean a journey to a Tesco town. So why the sale? Strachan’s main business is that of newspapers whose sales are in decline big time. Young people tend not to read newspapers so the buying populace is increasing in age and therefore dying in numbers.
Figures at: http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/maps/regionals/ make for grim reading. Advertisers are switching to the Internet and that is not an item a newspaper shop can sell. Falling sales of tobacco products, sweets for the bairns (Bad for their teeth), also probably exacerbates the dwindling income for such a store? I hope that a buyer is found and the business continues, but we have recently seen the demise of Watsons, and have to count our lucky stars that Dougie found a buyer for our last remaining post office in Nairn.'
My perception as a customer has always been that this is a very busy store, with deep queues at weekends as folk buy their papers and then flit across the road for their rolls from Ashers.
Strachans has a good selection goods other than newsprint, books, magazines and stationary, the nearest such items are available outwith Nairn would probably mean a journey to a Tesco town. So why the sale? Strachan’s main business is that of newspapers whose sales are in decline big time. Young people tend not to read newspapers so the buying populace is increasing in age and therefore dying in numbers.
Figures at: http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/maps/regionals/ make for grim reading. Advertisers are switching to the Internet and that is not an item a newspaper shop can sell. Falling sales of tobacco products, sweets for the bairns (Bad for their teeth), also probably exacerbates the dwindling income for such a store? I hope that a buyer is found and the business continues, but we have recently seen the demise of Watsons, and have to count our lucky stars that Dougie found a buyer for our last remaining post office in Nairn.'
Maybe the demographics in Nairn might be a help to our newsagents iright? We have an older population so there will be a few here that will go on reading papers for a while yet, but you are right, I don't see many young people picking up a paper in the mornings. However, Strachans is definitely the best place to pick up your Sundays, they always manage to get the supplements in correctly. Another point worthy of consideration is that given the credit crunch and the increasing price of the papers, especially the Sundays, will those that wish to buy the papers still have the cash to do so.
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