We are still on holiday at the moment. Today I went to a sea themed theme park. Like all theme parks they have merchandising.... lots of merchandising, some of which I even recognized in our catalogue of personalized branded products. However what I did notice was that despite the best efforts of theme park staff as well as advertising initiatives and strategic placement of merchandise outlets sales were only average at best. This I noticed in stark contrast to my holiday last year in Disney Land. Almost every second person I bumped into last year had merchandise which they were either holding onto or were wearing (myself included... I had gigantic mickey mouse gloves on).

Merchandising is BIG business!! Other than the ticket price for admission, merchandising as well as food outlets would be the only revenue oportunities for the owners of the theme park. This means that the merchandise must be of 3 things:

1) Aesthetically Attractive
2) Quality to be perceivably medium high to high
3) Margins on the product to be high enough for you to earn

By neglecting on anyone of these 3 points will mean that your merchandising strategy will fail. These pointers are not just for theme parks. They are the key basics to anything from charity merchandise to concert event merchandising.

This particular theme park I was in simply was not up to scratch on 2 key points of aesthetics... the toys on offer were simply not designed well and not interesting enough to maintain the interest of kids and adults nor was the quality of a good standard.

If you are looking at merchandising to raise your bottom line for your business you simply cannot afford to simply randomly purchase low cost merchandise with little regard to aestetics. Purchasing merchandise acts not only to boost your bottom line but also offer you on going marketing. If you are purchasing these types of products with the attitude of ticking an assignment off your to do list then you potentially may be just wasting money as the end product will not be purchased by the user. The merchandise aesthetics and quality therefore should be a high priority in your decision making and it should be as high a regard as your budget.