Situated on the Suffolk coast, The Long Shop Museum is home of the Garrett steam engine, arguably one of our Region’s earliest manufacturing success stories. Now a well established charity, the Long Shop still faces business challenges as it seeks to preserve and promote our industrial heritage. Museum Director Stephen Mael had these questions to Robert.
We compete for visitors with a wide range of tourist and leisure attractions during our Easter to October season, welcoming around 12,000 people a year. How can we attract more visits on what is a very modest budget?
There are two sides to this particular coin for it is equally as important to maximise your income from the visitors who already come. I know that you have a thriving ‘friends’ scheme and work closely with many local schools, but have you considered:
- More themed days such as your ‘Final fling steam day’ on 19th October. Special events will bring people back for repeat visits, especially if you mail them. What’s more, you could offer them special offer ticket prices for their friends.
- Cross selling with other similar attractions? I know you used to do this with the Sizewell Visitor Centre before it closed, but what about collaborating with less obvious destinations, such as the Teapot Pottery at Debenham? After all, you both use hot water!
- Developing your website to attract supporters to your marketing database. You could then contact them by email, even when the museum is closed, offering them such products as Christmas Cards and gifts by mail order. You can get help with this through the DTI Uk Online for Business initiative via your local Business Link.
However many visitors we get here, they’ll never contribute all the cash we need to raise to develop the museum, maintain our working engines and continue our outreach work with schools. How can we get more donations and grants?
Your have been very successful in the past at winning the support of traditional heritage funders. This clearly demonstrates the value of the work of the museum. How about building on this success and seeking support from the business community? Here you will have to ‘trade’ benefits, rather than simply appeal for donations. For example:
- Engineering businesses could ‘adopt’ an engine, providing cash, materials and labour in exchange for public recognition and the chance to use the engine to promote their business.
- The museum is packed with super locations for advertising photo-shoots which would be ideal for campaigns that link new products with traditional values and strength. Why not find some local art students to put together a campaign to make agencies and photographers aware. Location fees could provide useful income and promote the museum too.
- There is a growing trend towards using ‘the outdoors’ for people development programmes. Could training companies use the museum when it is closed, as a novel and stimulating training environment.
All this activity is going to generate much more footfall round the museum. I can see how we can co-ordinate coach parties and other pre-booked groups so that we are not overwhelmed, but how else can we encourage our visitors spread their visits out throughout the week?
For any business, too many customers arriving at once can stretch resources and risk reputation. Restaurants also suffer from this problem, which is why many offer special deals for ‘off peak’ diners. As a principle, I prefer to see people offering free extras rather than reducing prices. Here are a few things you could quite easily do to tip your peaks over into the adjacent troughs:
- engine drivers breakfasts (bacon roll and mug of tea) at £2.00 for those arriving before 1030am
- free to attend readings, from books on local history on traditionally ‘quiet’ afternoons
- three for the price of two deals at the beginning and end of the season.