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MSA FORWARD 2022
May 18-22, 2022
Educational Session Recordings

Open-to-Buy Plus Product Development ROI

Presenter: Barbara Lenhardt Deputy Chief of Retail National Gallery of Art
Knowledge Standards: Merchandise Planning, Financial Management, Strategic Management

Session Description: With increased pressure on revenue generation within cultural organizations, continued distressing economic news, and donors and foundations pulling back on their giving, retail shop management need all the tools and techniques available to ensure increased revenue generation. These tools allow shop operators to answer these questions: What are we trying to do? How well are we doing it? And how can we improve to do better? This session will take you through the fundamentals of why you should develop an Open-to-Buy plan, how to use an OTB plan, and the resulting benefits to your bottom line. If you do not have an OTB plan as a part of your point-of-sale system, you will walk away with a simple spreadsheet that can take the place of a fully integrated module to your POS to put your plan into action immediately. This session will also demonstrate the Return-on-Investment for product development projects. Developing merchandise based on your institutional brand, permanent collection or traveling exhibitions is paramount to your cultural mission. However, not all projects have the same ROI. You need a focused plan with methods for capturing all the costs associated with a project to make informed decisions. This session will show you how to develop a simple process and make sure everything is accounted for in your ROI. This plan can support or conversely demonstrate why your organization should not move ahead with a particular project.