The Trading Post Hits the Dust

AFTER 40 years of pairing buyers with jousting sticks, and other more practical items, the Trading Post will no longer appear in its print form.  See Trading Post Letter in The Australian.

Telstra confirmed yesterday that the publication, which is owned by the telecommunications company's Sensis division, would be published solely online from the end of this month.

Auction site eBay (1.7 per cent of visitors) rendered the 33-year-old print edition of the Trading Post obsolete. Telstra closed Darryl Kerrigan's favourite publication in April, having paid $636m for it just five years earlier

The 40 year old paper's last edition was on October 29.

"With classifieds print usage declining significantly across ad volumes, circulation and readership it is no longer viable to continue producing the weekly print publications,'' staff were told in an email.

Telstra told staff it would try to find affected workers new jobs within the organisation.

"Where suitable opportunities cannot be found, redundancy packages will be offered as well as counselling and access to job search programs,'' the email said.

The latest cuts follow the closure of call centres in NSW and Queensland earlier this year.

And in April Trading Post owner Sensis, a division of Telstra, sacked 128 workers from its call centre in Melbourne because of a drop-off in phone directory advertising.

Declining Sales Due to Internet Usage

Sensis paid $636 million for the Trading Post group of 22 publications and five websites in March 2004, but the business has not been able to keep up with competition from websites.
The Trading Post classifieds newspaper will cease publishing within the next four weeks. While this has been a topic of discussion for months, there has been no clarity on specifics. The publisher has certainly worked hard to migrate customers to their website. In newsagencies, the Trading Post is not paying its way.  News agents around Australia were complaining that where years ago they were selling hundreds of the popular newspaper, now they were only selling 2-3 when it came out in print.

Trading Post History

The Tradeing Post has been a part of Australian life since 1966. It was made famous in the much-loved 1997 movie The Castle, in which the Kerrigan family pored over it for bargain buys.

At one point, one of Darryl Kerrigan's sons lifts his head from the pages of the paper and says someone is offering a pair of jousting sticks for sale. ''Tell 'em they're dreaming'' is his dad's famous response when he hears the asking price.

Telstra blamed the closure on steadily falling sales as classifieds shifted to the internet. There had been a 30 per cent increase in the number of advertisements placed on the Trading Posts website, and ''substantial decline'' in print advertisements.

The closure of the print operations will make 279 people redundant in nine locations around Australia, but Telstra said it would try to find replacement jobs for them within the organisation.

"I would like to thank the employees working within Trading Post, who are a highly dedicated group of people,'' said Telstra Media's head of classifieds, Michael Padden.

''It is never a good time for job losses, and decisions like these are not made lightly.''

Trading Post Facts

In April, Telstra closed the Trading Post print classified call centre in Sydney, costing 70 jobs. The workers were told that volume at the centre had dropped by 50 per cent.

The Melbourne Trading Post was first printed in 1966 by Margaret Wilkins and Charles Falkiner.

Two years later, Tradeing Post operations were established in Brisbane and Sydney, while Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania, Darwin and ACT editions were established during the 1980s and 1990s.

According to Telstra, the most popular Trading Post categories are pets and horses, household furniture and goods, wheels, tyres and parts, home renovations, rural and machinery, gardens and outdoor living, business and office, and sport, leisure and recreation.

 

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