ASVA Events

With the current cost of living crisis and the pressure on disposable income, many attractions will be keen to ensure that they are delivering value for money for their visitors. However, this has to be balanced with need to generate a profit, essential for the continued success of your organisation. In addition, with the cost of energy rising and inflation still over 10%, it’s also vitally important that we ensure all areas of the business are as effective and efficient as they can be.

One area that can potentially become neglected is your attraction’s retail space and yet it can make a significant contribution to secondary income if the products, marketing and management are of the highest order.  Pressures on budgets and resources may mean that this area is overlooked, with products not being refreshed. Clearly, this is particularly relevant if the products have a ‘sell by’ or ‘use by’ date on them.  However, this can be just as important if the products are no longer on trend and not hitting the spot as far as visitors are concerned.

Join us for our webinar on Wednesday 14th June at 10.30am where we’ll be exploring how to ‘Maximise Your Retail Offering’. This webinar will be delivered by ASVA members Merlinsoft Ltd, and aims to ensure that you’re maximising the potential, the sales and the profitability of your retail space.

Leading the event will be Owen Gleadall, founder of Merlinsoft, who has been supplying Retail Management Systems now for the best part of 50 years, working with many well-known brands including Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Nike 1948 and Zara.  He has also written the definitive guide to retailing, as used by students of the National Retail Academy in Sheffield.  A free copy of this book will be available to all attendees for just the postage and packing costs.

Key learning points will be:

• Effective Stock Control
• Perpetual Inventory
• Appropriate Pricing Policies
• Ensuring Margins are Maintained
• Gross Margin v Mark Up
• Maximising Profitability
• Keeping more of the money you take!

If you have a retail space within your attraction and want to ensure that it is delivering the best Return on Investment, then this webinar is for you! Using the collective knowledge and experience gained from many years working in a diverse range of retail businesses, visitor attractions and venues, the hints, tips and suggestions you will get from this webinar could be priceless. Take a real in depth look at your retail offering and see just how you can improve what it’s delivering.  Often, improvements can often be made by subtle changes and tweaks, with secondary income rising if you have the ‘upsells’ your visitors are looking for. The gift shop is an essential part of the visitor experience and very often a significant contributor to revenue and profit if managed effectively and efficiently. This webinar will help you do just that.

About Merlinsoft – Merlinsoft started originally back in 1981 as consultants to the retail sector and commenced as system builders and suppliers in 1983, offering PC based retail management systems to the smaller, multi-branch retailers who were looking to keep up with their larger cousins but on much reduced budgets.  This business continued in much the same form until 1995 when they were approached by a large visitor attraction who wanted to use their retail technology for their new venue but also asked if it could also ‘sell tickets’.  At the time it didn’t but over the next few months Merlinsoft added this feature to the retail system and, since that date, have continued to upgrade and enhance the offering, adding many more features and functions over the years.  The main ‘claim to fame’ of the Merlinsoft system is that it’s not a retail system, it’s not an admissions and ticketing system, it’s actually a fully integrated Attractions Management Solution.