Merchanise Sales as a Percentage of Revenue

[Abunai]

I asked this question in another, existing thread, but thought it merited its own discussion:

A lot of you have a gift shop on site along with your haunted attraction.

Do any of you have hard data regarding the percentage of your patrons that purchase additional merchandise in the gift shop? (ticket sales vs. gift shop transactions).

How about scare photos, like a lot of amusement parks do? You photograph each patron/group of patrons at a reliably shocking scare and post photos near the exit for sale to the patrons in the photograph. Have any of you implemented this and what type of patron participation do you experience?

I plan to sell logo T-shirts, mugs, hats, and do the scare-photo thing and am looking for some SWAG numbers with which to populate my business plan.

I'm sure the logo merchandise sells better at established, big-name haunts (hey, Larry).

Thanks, all.

[Abunai]

Great points, mrfoos.

Thanks for the reply.

[Speculo]

We have a rather large giftshop http://fearworld.com/wordpress/gift-shop/

Well worth the effort. More importantly, it is critical to marketing. We offer a large variety of imprinted items, T-Shirts, Hoodies, Coffee mugs. stickers, pins, and even a Tiki Mug. Every T-shirt you sell allows your fans AKA Brand Ambassadors to market your event for you. Yes it can be a profit center, but its value to marketing cannot be overlooked.

[Speculo]

If you want to get a NETHERWORLD Tiki Mug you can get one here: http://shop.horrorinclay.com/product...-1-corpse-blue Thanks!

NETHERWORLD Tiki 1.JPGNETHERWORLD Tiki 2.JPG

[Abunai]

We have a rather large giftshop http://fearworld.com/wordpress/gift-shop/

Well worth the effort. More importantly, it is critical to marketing. We offer a large variety of imprinted items, T-Shirts, Hoodies, Coffee mugs. stickers, pins, and even a Tiki Mug. Every T-shirt you sell allows your fans AKA Brand Ambassadors to market your event for you. Yes it can be a profit center, but its value to marketing cannot be overlooked.

Netherworld, huh? Sounds like a nice little haunt.

I would imagine a larger percentage of the patrons buy logo products at a large, well-known, iconic haunt like yours.

The marketing aspect is a great side effect; let somebody pay you to advertise your business.

Thank you for the feedback.

[Farmer]

Netherworld has the nicest, most professional gift shop I've ever seen at a stand alone haunt. The layout, inventory, and presentation are theme park quality. Not to mention they got more of my money for it. -J

[Hacksaw]

"The marketing aspect is a great side effect; let somebody pay you to advertise your business. "

IMO, you have it backwards here. It's not a side-effect in my eyes, it's the MAIN REASON to sell shirts!! Have a cool / great looking shirt of your haunt, and sell it. Sell it CHEAP! Because those shirts in public will definitely be worth it's weight in gold in the marketing side of things. Because eventually you'll have tons of shirts out there, walking around the malls, at the fairs, drag strips / race tracks etc. More shirts = more eyes on your name.

I've never looked at merchandise as a bread-winner. Not even a supplement.

[drfrightner]

Here is what I've discovered about gift shops ... every major attraction you visit in Universal or Disney bam there is a themed gift shop waiting for you!!!

So yeah they work but do they work for haunted houses. More or less the answer is a FLAT OUT NO WAY JOSE NOT IN TWO MILLION YEARS FORGET THE IDEA TOTALLY!!!!

Now wait Ben just said they are worth the investment and he's right 110%... wait am I talking in circles?

Yeah I guess I am. Hold on let me shake my head around okay I'm back on target.

yes they work for some or I should say VERY FEW haunted houses and when I say VERY FEW i mean VERY VERY FEW haunted houses. I've talked to haunts who did full blown retail failed, I've talked to haunts who did just t-shirts and stuff never works. At the end of the day it just really depends on how many people you bring thru the door, how big you've built your legend and how cool your stuff is that you sell.

A retail store works for Netherworld and other haunts like Headless Horseman or Eastern State Penn (couple reasons)

1) They have people visiting from all over the WORLD. Anyone who visits from out of the market will buy everything and anything. Question is how many or what percentage of haunted houses open in 2015 has a ton of out of town visitors? I would say if you do even 1% you are lucky. I wouldn't doubt that Netherworld does over 10% if not 20% out of their direct area. There are other haunts with massive amounts of PR like Easter State Penn I would bet they do really well with retail. Sure there are others and I'm betting they do fantastic. But on the flip side most haunts would be lucky to get rid of their t-shirts and they probably will to their staff.

2) Another reason I think Netherworld's retail store works is honestly they've done a fantastic job at creating really cool collectibles. Netherworld has become a brand and when you've created a STRONG brand like Netherworld people will buy that stuff. Netherworld does huge parades and all kinds of other stuff which builds the brand. Most haunts and I'm going to go with 99% have not yet achieved building their brand, or built enough status to warrant a huge investment on retail.

3) Lastly attendance it must be SUPER HIGH to really sell a lot of retail... Netherworld has massive attendance. Some haunts that are say scream parks might do well if people can stay all night long those types of haunts do well with retail but most haunts will not.

In short there are some massive haunts out there and they do outrageous business with retail but I think most haunts would invest a lot into it only to be very disappointed in the end. Yes it can work and work big for a very few but for the rest I think its crash and burn.

This last year at Darkness we attempted a lot of Darkness logos on merch but we didn't even come close to selling it all... I'm stuck with thousands of dollars in stuff left over.

The hottest seller is simply t-shirts with your logo... and to get really brass tax cheap t-shirts like black and white not full color.

Unless you've been able to create a massive brand, have massive attendance, incredible national PR, and create very very cool merch I wouldn't go hog wild on it.

I admit I didn't do the best job creating the merchandise because I was too focused on getting the haunts OPEN! I think the focus for most haunters is get the haunt open and run it the best you can and if you are fortunate to expand into retail start SLOW and learn the learning curve.

Lastly I would say if you want to see how its DONE RIGHT visit Netherworld or Headless Horseman because they have it going on for sure!

I'm not trying to contradict Ben here because he's 110% RIGHT if done totally RIGHT but most of you simply can't risk the investment to do what some of the major attractions do.

Right now I would say if I'm going to get this RIGHT I NEED TO DO A LOT better job and it will cost me even more money so honestly I'm not sure how I move forward.

Larry