Once upon a time, in a gift shop far away ...

Storytelling is a lost art, and I’m sure many of you are doing your part to revive it. The art of the story has its place in business as well.

I recently heard about an organization who started seeing a peculiar rise in gift shop sales. It wasn't attributable to anything they had done to market the store or redirect traffic. It did seem to coincide with another change in their business though - that is they started selling tickets online. As they spoke to patrons and employees, they pieced it together and concluded that people were more likely to spend money in the gift shop when they hadn't just dropped a load of cash on tickets at the front desk. The “pain” of spending money on tickets was farther removed, and so they were more likely to whip out their card to buy a few items in the store, a pleasant unintended consequence!

Now, I could have just told you to sell more tickets online and you’ll see your merchandise sales go up, but that wouldn't quite have gotten the message across!

Here’s a challenge:  I want to tell YOUR story. I’m presenting at BBCON on effective retail operations, and I have some good information to share about how to manage inventory, market your store, configure the layout to optimize traffic, sell online, and other best practices. But what people want to hear are real stories of what has worked well for other organizations, something they can relate to and envision applying to their own business.

So how about it? Is there something unique you’ve done to drive business to your gift shop? Do you have an interesting way of looking at the numbers?  Have you found a peculiar trend? Did you hear a heartwarming story? I would love to hear about it, not matter how big or small.

Please email me with your story or fill out this survey if you prefer to remain anonymous.

Thanks for your input, and I hope to see you at BBCON 2013!