[BCMA] Operating a Museum Gift Shop

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv]

Hello Katie,

The Chase & District Museum has had a small gift shop probably since we
first opened. Most of the items we currently sell are from local
artisans/authors on consignment agreements with a few items being museum
created. Since I've been working here, I've found that the books do pretty
well. They're all local interest or B.C. subject matter. I had someone who
made bars of soap, those sold pretty well too. I think our postcards sell
really well. I used photographs from our archival collection and used
Vistaprint to print small quantities of postcards (smallest amount is 50).

All the items on consignment cost us nothing to have out and when they sell
we get a small portion of the sale. I try to keep the items fresh though,
contacting the artisans every few months to ask that they change out what
is here to avoid the gift shop looking stale. The postcards end up costing
us around 0.37cts each and we sell them at $2 each. This year is also our
35th anniversary so I ordered some enamel pins with our anniversary logo to
sell at $10 each. Honestly stuff does stick around here for quite a while
as the fall and winter is quite slow.

Breanne

On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 at 15:06, Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv <
listserv at lists.museum.bc.ca> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Our Board of Directors recently decided that we would open up a small gift
> shop to help add some additional revenue. Currently all our inventory
> includes older books and some older t-shirts that the previous gift shop
> used 5-6 years ago. We share a building with our local Tourism Discovery
> Centre, and they operate a large gift shop and we are trying to avoid
> duplicate products/ limit competition as we start out.
>
> Our question is, what items do other museums or heritage sites find to be
> the most profitable in their gift shops? We've done some online research to
> see what products some other museums sell, but we have no way of knowing
> what is a worthy investment of our funds. We want to order t-shirts and
> tote bags, but we are a little hesitant when the average cost to do a
> t-shirt with full color comes in around $18, and our initial thought was to
> keep shirts around $25-$30. Is this a fair price and should we adjust our
> potential selling costs, or is it on the high end?
>
> We appreciate any feedback that people are willing to share.
>
> Sincerely,
> Katie Edinger
>
> --
>
> *Katie Edinger*
> *Administrative Assistant*
>
> *Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin*
> *1660B Broadway Ave S. Williams Lake, BC*
> *V2G 2W4, **250.392.7404*
> *www.cowboy-museum.com <http://www.cowboy-museum.com/>*
>
> *Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin is grateful to be located on the
> territory of the St'exelcemc (Williams Lake First Nation) of the Secwépemc
> Nation.*
> *Serving on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc, Tŝilhqot'in, and
> Dakelh Nations.*
> _______________________________________________
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>


-- 
Breanne Malo
She/Her
Curator/Manager
Chase & District Museum & Archives
250-679-8847
Box 160 - 1042 Shuswap Avenue, Chase B.C. V0E 1M0
chasemuseumsociety at gmail.com
www.chasemuseum.com
"LIKE" us on Facebook
www.facebook.com/pages/Chase-and-District-Museum/141681956033401
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