We took over the running of our museum's small shop last year. We have local history books and a few others from well-known publishers. Many of these turn over quite well, but others do not. The whole place can only open once a week and our exposure to the public is therefore very limited. A number of books are listed on our website but we don't get much income from that.
What we are trying to decide is whether it is worthwhile dumping off some of the poor-selling bookstock at cost-price, or whatever we can get for them, and try to find products that sell more readily and provide a bit more variety other than books.
But, what? We see plenty of ideas around, like mugs, plates, other souvenirs, etc....but do they really sell? Our budget is desperately small; maybe no more than £100 per purchase-occasion. We can't go splashing out thousands on stock and in any case it would be silly to do so, in our circumstances.
It would be useful to know what kind of things people buy in shops, especially museum or heritage-connected charity shops.
