The Rise of Museum Stores as Retail Destinations
- 2016-10-12
- WGSN
It’s a familiar phrase, “please exit through the gift shop”, a phrase spoken by a range of museum assistants and such a popular phrase that it became the title for street artist Banksy’s movie. Gift shops were once seen as the afterthought, you went there after an amazing exhibition to pick up a memento, a pencil, a postcard or maybe even a book about what you had just seen.
But that was then, now a new wave of gift shops are changing the way we perceive them, these stores are becoming retail destinations on their own. “Now these museum stores, many of which are standalone propositions are creating the buzz for the exhibition, rather than the other way round.