1. Advanced Financial Assessment: Using the MSA Retail Industry Report to Advocate for your Store
Blue Anderson, Columbia River Maritime Museum
Andrew Andoniadis, Andoniadis Retail Services
Cathy Nagle-Ervin, Eastern National
Julie Steiner, Barnes Foundation
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2. Things to keep in mind
-All museums are special -Data is neutral -Context is everything (“compared to what, exactly?”) -“mean” vs. “median” -You can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re starting

3. Responding Museums
As in past surveys, the top 4 responding types of museums are Art, “Other”, Historical Sites and History museums. This has been unchanged from all previous surveys (2002, 2009, 2014)

4. “Other” includes:

5. Gross store sales
While previous surveys cut off the data at “$500,00 and above”, this year’s gives two new categories to give clarity and show difference in the larger museums, which make up 37% of our stores. 63% of our stores are less than $500k.

6. Median attendance by gross sales
This year’s survey broke out attendance by attendance type, so that you can see if your store tracks with others as far as the number of school groups served, tour groups, events, etc. These ticket types can have a big impact on per-visitor spending, and it helps to know where you fall—would be helpful to look at by % of visitation.

7. Median Attendance by Museum Type

8. Store size
When examining actual reported store size (not based on categories), the median is 1,000 square feet. Historic Sites tend to have the smallest stores, with a median size of 614 square feet. Nature Centers/Botanical Gardens/Arboretums report the largest stores, with a median of 1,400 square feet. Natural History museum stores have the highest ratio of visitor to store size. However, the size of the store isn’t necessarily the driving factor, as much as the type of museum. Art museums typically have larger stores, but one of the smaller ratios of visitors to store based on its size

9. Net sales, COGS and inventory

10. Sales, COGS and inventory

11. Margins
Gross Margin is the dollar difference between net sales and the cost of goods sold. Said another way, it represents the percentage of each dollar of revenue a store retains as gross profit; the higher the gross margin, the more a store retains on each dollar to be put toward general, operational and administrative expenses. Science/Technology museums have the highest gross margin (72%), while History museums report the lowest (49%). However, removing the highest and lowest gross margins, the range among the remaining types of museums varies by less than 10%.

12. Sales per square foot
This is useful when comparing to other sectors of the retail industry. With “Omnichannel” selling, this becomes less relevant to measure sales efficiency, but can still be useful when planning a new or remodeled store, or advocating to leadership.
Retail industry average is $325. Apple is the industry leader for many years, with $5,546. Tiffany & Co, $3000.
For comparison: off-price chains: TJ Maxx/Marshalls reports $453, HomeGoods $327, Ross Stores $312.
Department stores can range from under $100 (Sears) to $548 (Neiman Marcus). In 2016 JCPenney reported $121 and Macy’s, $198.

13. Top selling items

14. E-commerce
The average purchase amount for a website transaction is $48.67 (median = $40). Art and History museum stores have the highest median purchase amount per transaction ($52.00 and $54.50, respectively), while Historic Sites have the lowest ($20.87).

15. E-commerce

16. Top selling products online

18. Staffing

19. Staffing

20. Sales associate average tenure
This industry report offers a far more in-depth look at personnel positions, titles, benefits and salaries than past surveys, including a number of questions about the one position that no store can operate without: sales associates. One finding is that our sales associates have a relatively long tenure in our museums, with 57% of them in their positions for 3 years or more. This means that investments in their training and professional development has time to return dividends to the museums they work for (and benefits them to be members of MSA).

21. Point of Sale Systems
We also included a frequently asked question from ShopTalk—who is using what, as far as software goes? And found the following results. The”other” category here includes Quickbooks, Square, Microsoft RMS, Lightspeed, and Versai Museum Software.

22. Marketing Budgets

23. For discussion: Questions to consider:
What are the key influences driving your sector of the industry?
What are the segment outliers, and what creates those?
What makes your museum similar or different than the stats outlined in that summary?
What are the strengths of your unique case study, to highlight to your leadership?
Where do you see room to improve?

24. anderson@crmm.org andrew@museumstoreconsult.com
The full 2018 MSA Retail Industry Report is available for pre-order at the MSA FORWARD Registration Desk.
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