Each year until at least 2022 we need to grow our retail revenue and profitability by 10% or greater. At Bristol Museum & Art Gallery our retail is typical of the sector in converting about 10% of visitors into shoppers. For us, this will not be enough to do what we need to do. But we must hit our target.

To work out if you have any hope of making your target you need to do a little maths:

• Divide the total number of visitors by the expected number of shoppers to get your conversion rate e.g 10%
• Take your expected Average Transaction Value (ATV) and multiple this by your conversion rate to get a baseline amount of sales revenue you expect to generate – remember sales are not profit
• Take your baseline expected sales and divide by the expected visitor numbers to get your Spend Per Head (SPH)

The problem should be obvious…. an average is basically an assumption that IF A + B + C happens then success!

It is good to have a working set of data, averages and assumptions to use as a baseline but we can’t run our retail on assumptions and need to try everything to maximise sales. I know that to have more confidence in our programme we need to keep poking the box to try to positively increase our conversion and thus sales.

The best way to get the conversion up to is raise awareness to the visitor that we have a shop offer and try to affect behaviour. Our front hall has 100% of our visitors passing through.

During the summer holiday we’re testing the idea that more exposure should increase sales by introducing a small shop located in the front hall. This project will inform our future plans for growing the retail business which may include moving the location of the main shop.

The outline business case is below:

1. A visually attractive retail offer located in the front hall will undoubtedly increase awareness of a retail offer in the Museum. Although improvements have been made to the entrance of the main shop including introducing a large bookstand and jewellery stand, some visitors still miss the retail offer. This project will hopefully encourage impulse buying and whilst signposting to the main shop either now or for Christmas.
2. As an example we used a pop up shop for Chinese New Year which increased sales by 18% on the previous year 2015-2016. This also avoided the big queues in the shop and congestion in the entrance and exit in the shop which aids the visitor experience
3. There will be almost no investment costs, as we already have the equipment needed to set up a small shop.
4. Staff costs will be met using the current budget by moving the second retail assistant to the front hall. The downside of course will be less ability to deal with deliveries and some customers who want assistance.
5. The shop in the front hall will be open daily during summer school holidays 24th July -1st September and be mobile enough to be able to close and move for any evening events.
6. The space taken for the shop would measure 9ft (2.7 mtrs) by 11ft (3.4 mtrs).
7. Meeting the potential for growth – going on last year’s August figs of ATV at £6.18 an increase of 5% conversion could lead to an increase £10,000.
8. Hopefully a secondary benefit is that this will reduce queue pressure on the main shop
9. Use the opportunity to engage the visitors about our cafe and exhibition Pliosaurus

So how did we do the first week?

Sales in the front hall accounted for 13% of sales. The first two days we were finding our feet so i’d expect this to increase in the coming week. At this stage we can’t tell if this has simply taken a share of the main shop’s sales or increased sales overall… we need to compare a few data sources and experiment with the product range…. watch this space!

Customers buy what they can pick from the shop floor or online catalogue. Not what is “on its way from a warehouse” or “gathering dust” on our stockroom shelf. Stock not available to the customer is therefore waste. A waste of committed money (cash flow concern which  immediately introduces risk) and a waste of space in our shop stockroom which in turns reduces overall shop floor space and slows staff looking for product.

Because “Buying” is the most critical of the four pillars of retail, it seems the sensible place to focus our attention on to gain further improvement. I’m going to challenge ourselves to use 2017-18 to maximise our buying by refining the workflow.    This will be a collaboration between me, retail, user research and our digital team.

At present we do our buying like any other retailer, we order by supplier when we feel or notice heavy product depletion. Furthermore at any one time we’re “holding” about 10% of our annual total stockholding in our stockroom and another 10% on the shop floor. If it is on the stockroom shelf it has zero chance of being sold.  In addition to having a costly quantity of product hanging around, the space used to hold our product could potentially be converted into public shop floor space. For example at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery there is a false wall which conceals our stockroom which is about 8m in length with a depth of 1.4m. If we’re about to improve how we buy, it is possible to push this wall back further and gain that space as public floor space that could be used for 2-4 nesting tables worth £10,000+. The challenge of course is that would reduce our total stockroom space by 2/3.

If we can nail our understanding of what to buy and when, this would unlock the potential to carry out operation “shrink the stockroom”. Order exactly what we need when we need it and not before.

The upsides would be:

•  Move to a new process of ordering “just in time”
• reduce stockroom size thus freeing up new floor space for customers worth £10,000+
• reduce “out of stock” scenario by improving the buying process
• order by need not assumption
• reduce ordering time across the full year
• reduce owning costly stock that may not sell which also takes up space
• maximise available money set aside for buying products that sell
• Reduce time lost by staff who have to hunt around a big stockroom
• Heavily reduce human interaction which will reduce our cost per transaction and help us move to being digital by default
• Allow retail manager to focus on other tasks

Customers buy what they can pick from the shop floor or online catalogue. Not what is “on its way from a warehouse” or gathering dust on our stockroom shelf. Stock not available to the customer is therefore waste. A waste of committed money (cash flow concerns and thus an introduction of risk) and a waste of space in our shop stockroom which in turns reduces overall shop floor space and slows staff looking for product.

Because “Buying” is the most critical of the four pillars of retail, it seems the sensible place to work on iterating to gain further improvement. I’m going to challenge ourselves to use 2017 to maximise our buying workflow.

At present we do our buying like any other retailer, we order by supplier when we feel or notice heavy product depletion. Furthermore we “hold” about 1/4 of our stockholding in our stockroom. If it is on the stockroom shelf it has zero chance of being sold. In addition to having a costly quantity of product hanging around, the space used to hold our product could potentially be converted into public shop floor space. For example at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery there is a false wall which conceals our stockroom which is about 8m in length with a depth of 1.4m. If we’re about to improve how we buy, it is possible to push this wall back further and gain that space as public floor space that could be used for 2-4 nesting tables worth £10,000+. The challenge of course is that would reduce our total stockroom space by 2/3.

If we can increase our understanding of what to buy and when this would unlock the potential to carry out operation “shrink the stockroom”.

The upsides would be:

• move to a new process of ordering “just in time”
• reduce stockroom size thus freeing up new floor space for customers worth £10,000+
• reduce “out of stock” scenario by improving the buying process
• order by need not assumption
• reduce ordering time across the full year
• reduce owning costly stock that may not sell which also takes up space
• maximise available money set aside for buying products that sell
• reduce time lost by staff who have to hunt around a big stockroom

The first major step forward has been moving to a fully digital ordering process to minimise the steps required for that particular part of the system. We use a combination of Shopify reporting and google spreadsheets to do this. Our internal system for generating purchase orders currently prevents us using automated ordering directly to the supplier.

I think the next step will be to understand the rhythm of how often each product is sold AND what minimum order size suppliers can accept.

Myself and the team will write about our successes and challenges throughout the year. It won’t be easy but nothing worth doing is!