FROM THE GREEN ROOM: Dance/USA's e-Journal: Walk into any dance venue at showtime and you’ll see a table or two stacked with logo-stamped tees and sweats, maybe some mouse pads and water bottles. Or there might be a cramped gift shop, its goods stacked and boxed or sequestered behind glass, with a few featured items flapping on hangars. Sales from such endeavors rarely amount to much in the way of profits. But with creativity, resourcefulness, and commitment, performing-arts organizations can turn merchandising into serious money.
2 comments:
Wow, I never knew that so much went into the merchandise for a show. I really like how the woman in charge of the merchandise for the SF ballet made selling the merchandise into an artform of its own. When I was younger, I ALWAYS wanted to go to the gift shop, whether it was at a Broadway show or a museum. Most gift shops seem to be catered to young children, as kids are always asking for little toys and such that they see in their travels. Usually, the merchandise in gift shops isn't the best quality. This is definitely not the case with the SF ballet's merchandise. In fact, it seems as if many adults are attracted to the boutique-like gift shop. This goes to show that it pays off to be creative in every aspect in a business like theatre, from the actual performance to the gift shop passed on the way out.
This article calls attention to something that most patrons wouldn't even think about. Running a gift shop is extremely time consuming. The company isn't only running the shop when it is open around performances. They also have to do inventory, order merchandise, make decisions on what should be ordered again and what didn't sell well, and whoever is in charge of the merchandise must always be thinking long and hard about what the merchandise they sell says about their company. Sure, you can sell a lot of low-quality items for cheap, but do you really want your theater to be known as the one that sells stuff that breaks the first time out of the package? In order to have a successful merchandise line, you also have to know what your audiences are going to buy. This means working very closely with marketing and development in order to solidify audience demographics, and to see what has sold well in the past and figure out why. It's a huge undertaking, and requires full backing from your company. If the theater doesn't want to put the time into creating a good merchandise line, it will never get the revenue in return.
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