News & magazines

Delivering efficiency in black and white

Eradicate shrink. Forever.

For over 18 years rascal systems has been enabling efficiency in the newspapers and magazines category. This is achieved through delivery of robust data management services combined with standardised, streamlined store processes via an app on every handheld device in most retailer partners. The result every time is an instant reduction in overhead costs – labour and shrink & waste.

Effective in every store format from petrol filling stations to hypermarkets, in the current inflationary environment these solutions are a proven game-changer.

We work with retailers on an on-going basis to clean up their underlying category data sets – primarily EPoS – ensuring that they are clean, correct and can be trusted by everyone in the supply chain. When the suppliers have confidence in your data that we are managing, we can open the door to powerful solutions which reduce or can even eradicate shrink, plus other tools that drive sales and enhance cashflow.

Our latest innovation, EPoS Based Returns (EBR) for magazines, came to market during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The EBR model has been, or is in the process of being, adopted by all major retailers stocking magazines.

EBR is significantly better for two reasons. One, it removes the risk. We don’t take our foot off the pedal in terms of how we manage the category, but it gives us a little bit more freedom because the risk is gone and with rascals data it is just a lot easier. Secondly, it’s allowed us to restructure our retail labor model, which has saved us a lot of money.

Arron Roberstson
Operations Manager

Why choose rascal?

Independence

A critical and unique role, ensuring an accurate and fair outcome for both retailers and suppliers.

Robust tech & data

Over 18 years of proven security, stability and resilience of apps and systems for our retail partners.

Trusted partner

A small but significant cog in the supply chain network, ensuring confidence in retailers’ data.

Service excellence

Retailers consistently score rascal’s overall delivery in excess of 9/10 (3rd party managed satisfaction survey).

Why choose EBR?

Be growth-focussed

With shrink a thing of the past, you can stop worrying about loss and start being a growth-focused, ambitious retailer.

Strip out labour

The simplest trading model, underpinned by app-based technology saving real labour hours on the shop floor allowing you to focus on sales and service.

Eradicate shrink, forever

EBR makes shrink on magazines a thing of the past. It’s as simple as that.

Be data smart

rascal technology provides one version of the truth: industry leading, trusted data that informs your decision making.

How EBR helps retailers deliver efficiencies in magazines and other complex categories

Efficient operations are key for retail success. Complex categories like magazines are seeing declining sales, opaque data, supply chain issues, and significant margin erosion – precisely because of an efficiency deficit.

This ebook gives an overview of EPoS-based Returns (EBR), an innovative trading model that can effectively address the challenges facing magazine and other complex categories. It shows how, when implemented properly, EBR can help retailers to reduce costs, eliminate shrink, and sustain profits.





    What our customers' say

    Before working with rascal, we had very sporadic returns of newspapers and magazines, so the credits were not received. They obviously charge us a fee per year for the service, we saved roughly about three or four times that over the first year alone.

    Richard Tedder
    Ranging Lead, Non Food & Kiosk