Hi Tree,
Our small gift shop is run by our equally small team of staff and volunteers. We do not have a staff member dedicated to the gift shop, so we try to streamline its operations as much as possible. Our online gift shop was set up before I joined the staff, so I won't be able to answer your questions about the initial setup, but I have a few comments that might help:
- We do our own product photography. We hired a professional lighting designer to do the lighting in the gift shop, which makes a big difference in the photo quality.
- We use Square for our gift shop POS, and we use Square Online for the gift shop page on our website. Its layout templates are not as customizable as our other web pages, but otherwise it functions well enough. It looks like you are currently using the same- are you considering a more robust sales platform?
- Only about 8% of our total gift shop sales are online, but we do not advertise our online shop much. About a third of our online sales are from people who call our museum about a product, and staff direct them to the page.
- About 30% of our products are custom-created with local makers, which we often feature on the website and social media, but we do not sell them online, because...
- To cut down on fulfillment time, as it's done in-house, we only sell our books online. It limits the types of packaging we have to keep in stock, and we can ship them via USPS media mail, which keeps our shipping charges low.
For a small history museum in a popular tourist town, it works well for us. Our books are our bestselling products, and they are fairly efficient orders to fulfill.
Best,
Hannah
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Hannah Combs
Director
Bonner County Historical Society
Sandpoint ID
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2025 08:39 AM
From: Tree Callanan
Subject: To develop, or not to develop an online gift shop
Hi folks,
I'm hoping you can help. I'm the Director of Museum Operations at Blithewold Manor, Gardens & Arboretum in Bristol, RI. Blithewold's gift shop is a huge asset for us. But we are 100% lacking any online presence for the store. Our buyer does a fantastic job at selecting our merchandise. I know we can increase our revenue by creating an online presence. So, I'm attempting to collect data to support my request to move forward with the project. I'm hoping that some of you would be willing to share the story of how you developed your gift shop's online store?
I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I'll keep it brief.
- Was there internal resistance, if yes, how did you overcome those objections?
- How many people work on the project?
- How long did it take to get the store set up initially?
- Do you do all your own product photography?
- Do you do all the fulfillment? If yes, is that prohibitively time consuming? If not, what fulfillment house do you use?
- Is it more profitable than the brick and mortar stores?
- How many custom or exclusive products do you sell?
- I appreciate any other words of wisdom that you'd care to share!
Cheers,
Tree
Tree Callanan, Director of Museum
Operations & Communications
101 Ferry Road • Bristol, RI 02809
O: 401.253.2707 x23 • M: 401.351.6513
An American Garden Treasure ... Come, and be inspired