Winter 2011

Exhibit A: The Museum Store

Audience for Museum Gift Shops

Andrew Andoniadis, a museum store consultant and designer based in Portland, OR, says “most museums certainly don’t have the kind of foot traffic that a well-located store in a mall or vibrant downtown area has.” According to him, museum stores have to work hard to catch each person who comes through the door. While there are some exceptions—like The Met in New York, which has satellite shops in a number of high-traffic locations — 94 percent of museums only have stores on-site, reports the Museum Store Association, making the museum visitors the primary sales target.

The demographics of visitors varies based on subject matter and location of a museum, but Larry Fisher, a consulting museum planner and designer based in Bristol, RI, says museum store shoppers can be broadly categorized into three groups: the tourist, the enthusiast and the impulse buyer. The tourist buyer is the one who wants to take something home that’s a reminder of the visit. An enthusiast buyer, on the other hand, is someone who loves the subject of the museum—be it art, history, food, or science. This person is generally a repeat buyer, and might be a visitor or a member.

Members usually get discounts, and if they’re frequent buyers (they often are), this can eat into profit margins. “That’s a challenge for your markup to make sure you hit your numbers, and that’s something a retail store doesn’t necessarily have,” says Judy Yaras of FIDM Museum Shop, which offers a discount to all Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising students.

The final category is the impulse buyer. “We generally categorize [these buyers] as kids, but that’s not always the case,” Fisher says. “There’s the person who goes to any art museum to see an exhibition and they buy the catalog on an impulse. The likelihood of them reading it cover to cover is fairly slim, but they put in on the coffee table.”

Field trip-friendly places especially attract this kind of shopper. Of his time being involved with an aquarium, Fisher says: “It would always astonish me how school groups would come and the kids would go in and they would just clean the place out right up to the limit of whatever their parents had given them to spend.”

Staffing issues

Staffing for museum gift shops isn’t simple. All stores are looking for salespeople who are energetic, personable and knowledgeable about the products. That’s required at a museum store, too, but you also need staff members who care about the mission of the museum and know the exhibits well enough to answer questions visitors might have.

“It’s everybody’s responsibility to know what’s going on at the museum; the folks that we have who are on staff are really committed to the museum and know what’s going on with the collections and the rotations,” says Greg McKay, shop manager at the Denver Art Museum. “They’re excited about the institution and want to share that excitement with the visitor.”

Those who do look and act the part of museum aficionado will sell better, too. Geoff Walsky of Sky Retail Partners, who manages the Museum Shop at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts at the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, says of his employees: “The staff knows the history of the [’60s] and the details of the three days of peace, love and music. They wear the products, groove to the music and sell approximately four times the industry average per cap.” Volunteers are another aspect of staffing that can differ with museum stores. Andoniadis says he’s a strong advocate of the use of volunteers, pointing out the reduced labor costs and guarantee that these people are going to be committed to the museum’s message. “The downside is that they perhaps want to take time off on shorter notice, so scheduling and managing is sometimes a challenge,” he says.