An attraction shop sells to several kinds of buyer at different moments of the day: a child spending pocket money, a parent paying for what the child has chosen, and an adult looking for a keepsake of the visit. A range that serves all three is planned as a ladder of price points with something at each rung. A visitor with a small budget still leaves with a product, and a visitor with a larger one finds a piece worth the money.
Entry pieces
The lowest rung is the impulse purchase, which a child can afford from pocket money and a parent will add to the basket without a long discussion. Magnets, stickers and keyrings are the categories that sell at a gate or a terminal, and they suit this rung because they are small enough to sit at the till and quick to choose.
The middle of the range
Headwear, drinkware and apparel make up the core of most ranges and cover the widest spread of prices, because the fabric, the size and the decoration method each move the unit cost. Embroidery reads as premium on a cap and sublimation runs edge to edge across a tee. The same artwork can therefore sit on different rungs, depending on the product and the method chosen for it.
The hero piece
The hero piece is the product a family takes home as the memory of the visit, and it is usually a plush modelled on a species or a character the visitor has just met. It sets the top of the ladder and gives the rest of the range something to be priced against, so its size, detail and packaging are worth settling before the lower rungs are filled in.
Working back from the shelf price
A price ladder is set from the shelf downwards. The shop decides the retail price and the margin it needs, which gives a target unit cost, and the product, size, materials, decoration and packaging are then chosen to meet it.
Our design team checks a concept against tooling cost and decoration method before it reaches the client, so a shape that will not run at the target price is caught in the studio. A brief that names the retail price at the start gives the designer that target from the first sketch.
Packaging and presentation
Swing tags and packaging add to the cost of a piece and change how it reads at its price, so we design them alongside the product and settle them before the order goes into production. Mock-ups are free with every quote, which lets a shop see a piece in its artwork and its packaging before it commits.
Reviewing the ladder
The first season shows the shop which rungs sell. Stock for the Australian market is held in our Sydney warehouse and reordered from there, so a shop can add to the rungs that move and let the others run down. The brief for the next season can then state the price each new piece has to reach.
