Preparing for Profit
Call for tenders
The project
A consortium of museums from the BOB (Berkshire/ Oxfordshire / Buckinghamshire
/Milton Keynes) Region has been awarded a grant of £132,750 by the Arts Council
England through its Resilience Fund. The project intends to increase partner
museums’ resilience through the identification and development of new income
streams through catering and retail and seeks to:
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build on the strengths within the group and between individual museums,
through shared experience,
Commission external consultancy advice to shape cooperation, development
and sustainability
Develop a more adventurous approach to stocking and proactive
management
. Deliver improvements in trading performance.
The project will explore practical solutions to priorities identified during the initial
consultant’s review. The process of consultant scrutiny will build greater selfawareness among museums and will be further supported through the opportunity to
work with colleague mentors.
The group views the expertise already available between the partners as a major
strength and the allocation of budget to encourage project development and
consultancy will allow genuine case studies to evolve that can feed sharing days and
as transferrable models for other locations to implement . The local Museum
Development Officer (MDO) network will assist in wider dissemination of lessons and
ensure take up of organized events.
We therefore wish to commission a consultant/s with extensive knowledge and
expertise in retail and / or catering to coordinate work which is expected to include:
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Mapping current partner museum retail and catering activity
Identifying partner museum requirements, both individually and collectively
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Developing action plans and activities for partner museums
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Facilitating mentoring relationships between partner museums
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Developing knowledge sharing events for the wider region
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Evaluating the impact of the project on partner museums.
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The main deliverables to be established for the long term are:
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resilient connections
joint patterns of procurement
effective management systems
common accounting systems where feasible
Sustainable sharing and support retail network
Partner museums
Overview
The BOB area partnership offers experience and conspicuous achievement in retail
and catering but this is largely limited to a handful of larger museums with resources
to allocate to training and professional staffing in these areas. The Museum of
English Rural Life (MERL) and Reading Museum have benefitted from accumulated
experience in their Reading Connections project and Oxford University Museums
(OUM), through ASPIRE Advice has twice delivered effective offsite training using
the expertise of the Ashmolean retail staff and OUM in retail management to single
staff from some of the regions museums.
In 2010-11 eight BOB Museums took part in a regional Rapid Retail Assessments
project delivered by Museum Development South East (MDS) and partners who
benefitted from this are keen to build further on the insights then provided. For
example Abingdon used the services of two consultants with funding from the MDS
micro-consultancy to look at options for income generation identifying issues that
require further review and additional funding and offer lessons for other partners.
The project has also been discussed with the Association of Cultural Enterprises
who will provide additional advice and guidance to the partner museums.
The partner museums
The group will harness past experience and training to a programme that will embed
messages and foster a greater range of individual partnerships where joint product
development, service /management collaboration and ideas workshops can become
sustainable for the long term.
Reading Museum and MERL have been working together to improve their retail
offer as part of their joint ACE Strategic Fund project in 2014-15. This collaboration
has identified joint ambitions that will require further time and additional resource in
the future– this BOB project will help continue to build on the success of this initial
work.
MERL is currently in the delivery stage of Our Country Lives (OCL), a project funded
by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and other funders to redevelop the galleries and
interpretation of the Museum. Reading Museum is currently in the development
phase of their Reading Abbey Revealed project, also funded by HLF that is
rejuvenating the town’s historic Abbey Quarter.
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The lead partner Bucks County Museum moved to Trust status in September and
is reviewing its financial records management and trading status as a charity. While
many issues will have been resolved before April 2015 the case for separation of
commercial and charitable activity requires additional careful review. Additionally
forward planning for new space hire and café/retail operations require expertise not
currently available but important in preparing for future application to the HLF for
major capital development.
The Oxfordshire Museum celebrated the opening last summer of the independently
operated Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum on their site. Whilst offering new
opportunities to further increase income through retail and catering, it also presents a
challenge in terms of ensuring that the two offers are complimentary and that the
Country Museum is able to maximise the retail potential of the site at a time when
core County contribution is falling. Better benchmarking and updated retail expertise
is needed to maximize this.
Following the successful 'Access to Abingdon County Hall Museum' £3m HLF
project which ended in 2014, the museum is aware that income generation now
needs to be maximised to fund some museum functions that have been assisted by
the HLF project during the period since the museum re-opened in July 2012 and
December 2014. The museum currently has a small shop and in March 2015
commenced a simple in-house café function.
COAM had AIM sustainable Development grant and Chilterns Conservation Board
funding to refit its shop a couple of years ago to improve visual merchandising
opportunities. COAM is now anxious to develop a succession plan and business
expansion for retail where turnover is just 50% of catering and feedback from
visitors in visitor surveys and verbally indicate a need to review products and better
visual merchandising. The in house catering operation – is also below potential
needing more experienced advice in several areas.
Milton Keynes Council works with its own consortium of museums within the local
authority area to develop joint working. Initial work through individual project funding
has (Bletchley Park) or is having (MK Museum and Cowper and Newton Museum) a
positive effect in developing retail income to increase sustainability, but developing a
joint strategy across Milton Keynes and the region is an aspiration. It is also
anticipated that this project could other, emerging museums within Milton Keynes.
Project description
We anticipate that the successful consultant/s will:
1. Be responsible for shaping the project and report to the project board on all
aspects of implementation
2. Conduct a rapid benchmarking of existing specific and common retail and
catering needs in the museums highlighting areas for potential enhancement e.g.
product development, mechanising, marketing, brokering, licensing, training etc
3. Develop shared good practice in training and mentoring events across BOB and
the wider SE region.
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4. Identify four /five key ‘needs strands’ and procure and manage consultants to
work with individual museums to identify relevant transferrable models of
effective time allocation, cost and profitability for different profit generating
enterprises. (Each partner to have a small budget and consultant time to
implement recommendations in year 2)
5. Manage and oversee contracts issued to subcontractors
6. Work with the Association of Cultural Enterprises and the South East Museum
Development Programme officer to ensure that the best and most appropriate
training is commissioned and taken up and is open to the wider BOB Museums
Network.
The programme of activity for partner museums will respond to local priorities but
may tackle among other issues:
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The sharing of good practice in benchmarking and sharing days,
Local development of staff at individual sites
volunteer heritage retail knowledge and sales techniques
and the ability to try new ranges, layouts and other potential upselling techniques
without the fear of financial failure which discourages risk taking.
Linkages
The project will link into the Effective Collections and Better Business
programme focus area of the South East Museum Development programme which
will be delivering activity on ethical income generation from collections.
Office facilities will be offered for an onsite office at the host museum Bucks County
Museum, which will also act as overall project administrator.
The project has also been discussed with the Association of Cultural Enterprises
which has indicated that it is willing to provide additional support and guidance
through its membership and contacts.
The MERL and Reading museum have benefitted from accumulated experience in
their Reading Connections project and Oxford University Museums, through
ASPIRE Advice has twice delivered effective offsite training using the expertise of
the Ashmolean retail staff and OUM in retail management to single staff from some
of the regions museums.
Project duration
Administration and approach to project delivery
The project has limited fixed costs and will be managed on a project basis. A
consultant/s will be appointed for the duration of the project with the potential to
adjust the balance of funding going to specialist consultancies if this responds best
to the challenges identified. This should enable the right expertise and support on
the ground for the individual museums working with specialist consultants. This
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flexible model should help reduce tension between travelling to partner museums to
offer bespoke advice and coordinating the administration of the project.
The project will be led by a steering committee of the partners, with the project lead,
Bucks County Museums, providing regular oversight.
The close association of the South East Museum Development Programme with the
initiative will ensure a sustained commercial enterprises group will continue at the
end of the project with each museum taking turns to organise briefing/sharing
sessions.
Project Budget
£66 500 – All consultancy work over two years, travel, fees paid out and overheads
£11 250 – training courses to be delivered with MDO
£50 000 – funding for partner museums to test new products
Project Timeline
A timeline submitted with the application is attached
Tender submissions:
Please submit your tender for Preparing for Profit by [insert date]. Interviews will be
held on [insert date]..
Your tender should outline how you propose to deliver the project and should
demonstrate how you offer maximum value for money.
CVs should be submitted for each named consultant with individual delivery tasks
within the tender also stated. Previous working together as a team should also be
stated.
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