Distribution is no easy business. Rising costs and troubles in staffing the operations had created challenges for several newspapers even before the pandemic.

JP/Politikens Hus has been successfully tackling these issues by tweaking their strategies, adding resources and identifying new revenue sources.
Tweaking core distribution
Publisher of leading Danish dailies Politiken and Jyllands-Posten, JPP’s core product is its newspapers and has built its distribution network distributing newspapers mainly.

“From 1980-2007, we built up the distribution network. And from the year 2007 we have had only one carrier to deliver at the same address,” said Hans Peter Nissen, head of Logistics at JPP, speaking at the recent WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress. The company also developed technology that made co-distribution possible throughout the country.

In 2020, JPP introduced another change: Delivery of retail single sales was included in its primary distribution network.

“It means that all the retail single sales were also now being delivered by our normal newspaper deliverers in cars and scooters,” Nissen said. 
Making space for magazines
JPP, which distributed only newspapers from 1987 to 2001, added magazines to the fold in 2003.
“We saw that it was not possible to carry on distribution only with newspapers. It was going to be too expensive. So we added magazines,” said Nissen. 
The company, however, distributed only those magazines with very high circulation number...