Jackie’s News originally started life in the late 1980s as a newsagent and sweet shop called Page’s in Tenterden. It became Jackie’s in the 1990s when Jackie Parsons bought the shop from her employers (her sister and brother-in-law, Linda and Fred Page). Then in 2001 Jackie relinquished the shop premises to concentrate solely on Home News Delivery. From 2001 Jackie and her husband John successfully operated and grew the business to serve not just Tenterden but subsequently acquired rounds in High Halden, Rolvenden and Wittersham. We purchased the business from Jackie and John in March 2007. We kept the name because they had a great reputation and brand in the community that we hoped to emulate.
From March 2007 we began to serve a customer base of around 1200 homes and businesses in Tenterden, St Michaels, High Halden, Rolvenden, Rolvenden Layne, Wittersham, Stone-in-Oxney, Ebony and, later that year, Peasmarsh.
A year on in 2008 we expanded our business by taking on the CTN kiosk to serve hot drinks and newspapers to the commuters at Headcorn station.
From our initial purchase of Jackie’s until the summer of 2009 the delivery of newspapers was mixed between local teenagers in built up areas and adult car driving deliverers on the rural side. Whilst this provided work possibilities for young people this restricted the amount of newspapers each deliverer could cope with (weight of papers plus Government children at work regulations) and our overall control of the delivery process. As a consequence we rerouted the rounds to serve a higher number of customers per deliverer and changed to employing drivers only as deliverers.
In June 2010 we purchased some 400 customers from the newsagents in Northiam which subsequently closed down. This meant we could serve a new group of readers living in the communities at Northiam, Newenden and Beckley – some of which are far from any shops.
Six months after this we agreed with South Eastern Railway’s management team to recreate the Headcorn CTN kiosk at Staplehurst Station – so by the start of 2011 there were now 2 stations with Jackie’s News kiosks in them.
In May 2011 Smarden Post Office approached us with a view to purchasing 200 home news delivery customers which they were serving. This increased our customer base from 1600 to 1800 and meant we were now delivering newspapers and magazines to Smarden and outlying areas.
Just over a year after that Jackie’s News turned a historical circle when we entered discussion with Page’s (Linda and Fred) Newsagents in Cranbrook to take over the delivery to 725 of their existing customer base. By September 2012 this was completed and brought our total customer number up to over 2,500 and saw us serving new areas of Sandhurst, Hawkhurst, Frittenden, Benenden, Iden Green, Sissinghurst, rural Cranbrook and south Staplehurst. In addition to the domestic supply we now also began sub supply to two garages, a park home shop, a village shop and a hospital shop.
In February 2013 Jackie’s News purchased 110 customers in Pluckley and Egerton and a bit later on in November we purchased another 98 customers in Great Chart, Charing and Ashford, both of these purchases were from fellow HND specialist Delivered News of Aylesford (now NewsTeam), further adding to our customer base in those areas.
In February 2014 we purchased 112 customers in Rural Woodchurch, that and increased marketing took our customer base over 3,000 mark, with an agreement to take on the central section of Woodchurch village when the existing deliverers retired. This next acquisition took place in November adding a further 150.
In October 2014 we took a call from a newspaper reader in Littlestone who asked if we could deliver her paper as the local paper shop had decided to stop offering a delivery service in Littlestone and New Romney. With the help of that newsagent, we were able to step in and accommodate 130 new customers within an extremely short space of time (just 4 days between that phone call and the first delivery being made).
In December 2014 a similar situation occurred in Parkwood Maidstone where the local shop decided to stop delivering to his 40 customers. We stepped in to deliver there (again at very short notice) and then purchased some other drops in Leeds and Bearsted from Delivered News in order to make the new round commercially viable.
We continued in the same vein over the following 5 years buying rounds from shops that no longer had the appetite to deliver or stepping in to serve communities where a shop had closed down. From 2015 until the end of 2019 this policy brought us new customers in Hollingbourne, Greatstone, St Michaels, Appledore, Maidstone (again), Ashford (three shops’ rounds), Staplecross, Lydd, Marden, Brook, Charing and Lenham. During this time, as we had outgrown our business park unit, our landlord kindly allowed us to knock through to the next unit and expand our operation.
The arrival of covid brought all home news deliverers a massive surge of demand and we were no different, adding some 800 customers in the first 3 months of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Whilst the majority of those were always going to be temporary orders, we were pleased to be doing our bit in delivering newspapers to the homes of those unable to get out during that challenging time. Even after people returned to work, the footfall at our two station kiosks had dropped significantly enough to make it economically unappealing for us as a company to reopen. However they remained workable for an owner manager, so one of our employees, Leon Greenwood, took over from us and made a success of it.
Throughout 2021 and 2022 we successfully continued our policy of serving new customers by acquisitions in Rye, Dymchurch, St Marys Bay, Ashford, Coxheath and Harrietsham. Because of the ongoing decline in the number of newspaper readers we find ourselves in a position of frequently revising our rounds and our routes in order to maintain our efficiency and remain a healthy business employing 25 round drivers, 5 cover drivers and an office team of 3.
We would like to thank our customers, there are still over 3900 and some of those have been with us since as long ago as 2007. We aim to continue delivering papers to them long into the future.