Eastcliffe News Shops formerly Northcliffe Retail Ltd was part of the Northcliffe Newspaper Group owned by the Daily Mail General Trust. Formed in 1978, the business traded as a division of Leicester Mercury Group Ltd but in April 1997 it was transferred to a new Company Northcliffe Retail Ltd to enable its retail expertise to be available to the whole of the Northcliffe Newspaper Group.

With an annual turnover of over £40m the Company operates 50 retail outlets situated throughout the Counties of Leicestershire, Rutland, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and South Lincolnshire. According to their location the retail outlets use the following trading names:-

• Mercury News Shops
• Post News Shops
• Telegraph News Shops
• Daily Mail News Shops

The principle retailing activities offered are newspapers, magazines, confectionery and greeting cards, in addition, it operates 4 Franchise and Sub Post Offices.

Eastcliffe News Shops concentrates on the development and specialisation of newspaper and magazine retailing. Some 30% of shelf space is given over to the sales and development of news related products. It is heavily supportive towards the promotion and sales of the local titles, the Leicester Mercury, Nottingham Evening Post and Derby Evening Telegraph and the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Further expansion is expected throughout the East Midlands region.

Its successful news delivery service reaches more than 78,000 homes and offices daily and the shops are used by 415,000 customers each week. The home news delivery service is fully computerised giving the business enormous benefits in terms of both news debt management and marketing information. There are more than 2000 sales and news delivery staff employed throughout its outlets.

The shops are managed by self employed Contractor Managers and the business concentrates on a sensible but highly controlled management approach enabling product, ranging and planogramming disciplines to be maintained.

All shops are EPOS driven. The knowledge from this powerful facility will keep Eastcliffe News Shops ahead of its rivals and provide essential data to help increase the sales of all news and other related products.