Airshow and museum trinkets, toys, stuff...

[RyanShort1]

Ok, so how many of you have helped or know about your museum, CAF Squadron PX, or whatever fundraising arm you have and how sales are? Specific questions:

1. What kind of stuff is selling?
2. What kind of markup do you need?
3. Why does it seem to me that the stuff nowadays isn't nearly as good as what I remember from the 80s and 90s?
4. What kind of products would you LIKE to carry?
5. What kind of quantities are we talking?

Thanks!

I've been thinking of a small cottage industry with some vintage-style warbirds-related items and trying to figure out if it's even worth a shot.

[ALOHADAVE]

Biggest sellers at the Travis AFB Museum gift shop are:
small toy planes for the kids $5- $10
Remove before flight key chains $3-$5
candy and drinks

Worse are books, posters, post cards, DVDs

Used/resale books do sell

[RyanShort1]

Thanks for the reply. I may run something by you later to get your opinion, any other folks out there reading this?

[wendovertom]

Oh Ryan you Texans have all the planes so just deal with it

Seriously, I agree with Dave in a few things -

small toy planes and key chains sell well for us.
Postcards sell well here - they are ones that we have made with vintage photos of Wendover so they are a little more unique
T-shirts do OK - not great but well enough to keep us ordering them here and there. An interesting note, shirts specifically made by us for the museum sell better than the pre-made shirt with the museum logo screened on the sleeve or something.
We don't sell posters
Books are slow moving

Feel free to PM me and go into it deeper. And just take my smart alec remark in stride - I am just jealous that we don't have a few seriously wealthy folks with a huge warbird collection here in Utah.

Tom P.

[kmiles]

Our situation is a little difference with the traveling tour as we have to haul everything we sell from city to city. We find that sugar sell well because they are shirts that are made specifically with our planes on them. We have tried a couple of shirts for aircraft that may not have been on tour at that time, and they do not sell. We have found that all of the items that are specific to our aircraft sell a lot better than just the "B-17 or B-24" items that are not specific to our aircraft. The kids toys for $5 or $10 do sell well, but any thing higher than that price point, and it needs to be for a specific aircraft that is there on the ramp.

[ALOHADAVE]

T-shirts and polo shirts with logos specific to our museum do sell good.
I believe that some members of the public want something specific to the event or place to remember it by as a type of keepsake.
General items can be obtained elsewhere for less and the public knows that.

[Warbird Kid]

1. What kind of stuff is selling?
T-shirts, Small Plane Toys, WASP or Female Aviation related Items, Models

2. What kind of markup do you need?
20% to 30% normally

3. Why does it seem to me that the stuff nowadays isn't nearly as good as what I remember from the 80s and 90s?
I think because of the ease of 21st century wholesale purchasing. Companies like Born Aviation Products, or Historic Aviation, most museums take the easy route. They order their entire gift shop from the magazine without trying to put any personal effort or thought into designs and merchandise.

4. What kind of products would you LIKE to carry?
Custom Models, in particular the Whitehead No.21. Not a single model out there. More custom clothing in the future.

5. What kind of quantities are we talking?
Depends on what were talking about:
Toys: 10-20/units
T-shirt: 30-40/units
Model: 40/units


For our museum, we’ve really pushed T-shirts. Everybody seems to need them. Since then we’ve expanded out to workshirts and now coveralls. One item Im particularly proud of is our reproduction Corsair Bottle Opener. We acquired an original Goodyear bottle opener.



I took the piece, scanned it, and redrew it in Illustrator on the computer. I swapped out the Goodyear name for our own, and added some information not he back. The results... we're better than expected.





We sell them for $7.00 each plus s&h, in case anyone is interested. This is just an example of a personalized, totally custom example of merchandise we sell. It would be great to see the thought and time it takes to make or have made personalized one of a kind items to sell in your shop. Or at the very least, try and go outside the normal channels to acquire and offer something more unique.

[Scott Rose]

I love that bottle opener Chris. I might have to acquire a couple. Is there a way to order them online?

[ALOHADAVE]

I too love the bottle opener idea. good job! good thinking!

[K5DH]

At VFM, airplane parts seem to sell fairly well. I'm talking about instruments, ammo cans, pistons, spark plugs, fuel caps, and similar small items that people can easily set on a desk or knick-knack shelf. It helps to be able to tell the buyer what kind of aircraft the item came from. A few months ago, I found a box of instruments in the warehouse that came from CH-47 Chinook helicopters. I figured they'd sell, but at first, they just sat there. However, they "flew" off the shelves (pardon the pun) we put a label on them telling what aircraft they came from. I think they went for $10 to $20 each.

If your museum is re-skinning an aircraft, try selling little squares of removed skin for $5 to $10, with a certificate of authenticity. That's almost free money.

I agree that books, postcards, and posters sell poorly. Inexpensive toys do quite well. Tee shirts sell slow 'n steady. Polo and button-down shirts move slowly.

[Warbird Kid]

I love that bottle opener Chris. I might have to acquire a couple. Is there a way to order them online?

Thanks! No, unfortunately no online store for the CASC at the moment. Just let mw know how many and address. We take checks, cash, paypal, etc.

[p51]

Like many of you, I always hit the gift shop at almost any museum I ever go to. I've noticed the following odd things in many of them:
-Lack of stickers for the museum itself (I know plenty of people who buy stickers from places they go)
-'General' items that you could get anywhere, very little museum-related swag
-Very poorly-designed shirts or hats
-Hats that only a kid could wear (let's face it, a lot of hobbyists of any type tend to be on the large size, including their heads)
-Really cheap-looking stuff
-Books that have no bearing on the museum or its collection
All this works okay for kid's stuff to a degree, but serious visitors, not so much.
Also, for the love of God, why can't museums have an online gift shop? Some people think later, "Man, I should have gotten that," or see something from someone else and think, "Wow, I'll never get there but I'd love to have that." and in many of these cases, you have to actually go there to buy it. Some museums won't sell at all to someone not standing there and you'd never know what they have in most cases if you didn't go personally. Museums are missing out by not making their stock available to people at a distance.