The fine art of retailing

Museums are beginning to grasp that their retail outlets can be real money spinners, and they are bringing in the finest exponents of retail design to ensure that their shops do themselves justice

Whether you’re the type who opts for a 50p postcard or pencil sharpener, or the one who goes the whole hog and orders the £20,000 replica of a Roman horse statue (it happens, apparently!), the fact is, that many of us like to take home a memento of some sort of our visit to a museum or art gallery.

That’s so mething that marks this kind of retailing out from the highstreet straight away, but more than anything the biggest difference has to be that these institutions aren’t always sure they want to sell you anything in the first place.

‘In the museums themselves, there is always a large section of the hierarchy that resists the retail part,’ says Callum Lumsden of Lumsden at Small Back Room. He should know, having been a major player in this sector for a long time now, working on among other things the shop at Tate Modern, London Transport Museum’s store and, most recently, the up-market Grenville Room at the British Museum.

He continues: ‘That exists in every museum I have ever worked in. It is always a battle between the academics and trustees and the commercial arm, but in the end it’s massive business – the V&A has a £27m annual retail turnover, the British Museum £17m.’

It’s difficult to argue against figures like that in these straitened times – although obviously not every gallery and museum is pulling in those kinds of numbers.

‘Most of the clients in the museum sector now realise the importance of retail as an income generator,’ adds David Campbell, managing director of Campbell & Co, which recently designed the retail in the refurbished McManus Galleries in Dundee, as part of its work on the displays and design of all public areas. ‘The retail element is now part of the visitor experience.’

Path Design partner Jon Muskett agrees: ‘A lot of museums are only just coming to terms with how important their revenue-generating spaces are and giving them greater clarity and much more of a highstreet focus – giving them much more depth and consideration. Within the museum, it is very difficult to understand what comes first, and internally there is always a fight for the people running the commercial side.

‘But the reliance on the commercial arm is becoming evermore important and museums have to decide how much they are going to commit – are they going to give it a premium space or not? There can be a lot of internal fighting as to where shops should be, but they really need to be in high-traffic areas rather than just a nice little corner that looks the right size. That idea is still bandied around.’

One key indicator that museums are recognising the importance of retail is that they are bringing in specialist retail designers to do the job. ‘It is becoming an ever-more important revenue stream, and that is why I think they are approaching it by bringing people like ourselves who have extensive retail experience, to apply retail best practices,’ says George Gottl, cocreative director and partner of Uxus, which has been appointed to look at all of the retail at Tate Modern, including the extension being designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

‘Retail for museums in general basically leans on the fact that they have a captive audience, and I think a lot of people are discovering that one way to raise revenue is to create what is in effect a standalone retail experience – something that competes with high-street stores,’ says Gottl.

‘One of the things they have as a point of difference is that they have the exhibits – they can use those as a leveraging tool to create something that is unique and exciting and attracts people outside of the normal visitors to retail.’

Lumsden agrees: ‘Museums have a point of difference exactly because they are museums; they can actually sell pretty specialist products that are very different from the stuff you see in a shopping mall. And that’s the attraction.

‘A lot of these shops are becoming destination stores in their own right.’

This point of difference is also a defining element of the retail design. The type of merchandise sold reflects the institutions’ collections. The merchandise often covers an extremely wide range, requiring a broader mix of fixturing than is usually found in most stores.

The fixturing also needs to be very flexible to be able to cope with merchandise changes, for elements such as temporary exhibitions and to increase in busier times, contract in slower ones or even, taking Campbell & Co’s work at the McManus as an example, to allow the space to contract and be given over to events when necessary.

‘Museums don’t go into the kind of detail of customer profiling that high street stores do – the merchandise range is really based on the activity of the museum, reflecting its collection, and this is the starting point for the design,’ says Campbell.

Lumsden agrees, pointing to the example of the Grenville Room which has small items like pens right through to the previously mentioned £20,000 horse’s head (most of the items are of the highticket value variety).

The museums themselves also dictate how their stores should look to a great extent – they have to fit in with the actual building, which are often listed – and the institution’s brand values.

Uxus’s Gottl points out: ‘Basically you have to respect the institution you are working with and you have to be sensitive to their needs and respectful to the art. We are there to support the experience not to create it. In other words, we’re not the drivers.’

Campbell adds: ‘Retail in museum design in my view has to be of a commensurate quality with the rest of the museum; the price per square metre in a museum in terms of fit-out is much higher than you would normally expect to see in a high-street retail environment.’

So retailing in museums has reached a point where it’s a key part of the operation – even part of the experience, as some point out, but these retail designers are also mindful that its role may change.

‘The big question for me is, with this new government, what is going to happen to museums, will they still remain free?’ asks Lumsden. ‘If you have to start paying, how will that affect the retail part of the offer?Will you want to pay £25 to get in as a family and go to the shop as well? Alternatively you could make the shops so good that they make even more money and that helps to fund people going in.’

Path’s Muskett sums it up: ‘If they do start to charge an entrance fee, how much are people going to be prepared to spend for a day out? They will become more selective and considered when spending in shops and so the offer will have to be greater, more considered and more appropriate to the time and place.’

In short, the museum shop will be competing for the pound in your pocket just like the high street, just like a real shop.



This article was first published in FX Magazine.








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