Henry's Attic Gets an Overhaul

In the early years of the 20th century, Henry Ford began collecting artifacts that reflected the uniquely inventive spirit of the American people. Ford believed that the public could be inspired to learn more about American history from objects and exhibits than they could be taught through books alone.

The collection, which was originally referred to as "Henry's Attic," was first incorporated as the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1929. In 1933, Ford opened Greenfield Village, a makeshift neighborhood of historic buildings on a 200-acre site adjacent to the museum. Today, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village (HFMGV) is the nation's largest indoor/ outdoor history museum, hosting more than 1.6 million visitors annually. Among the one million historical artifacts collected in the museum is one of Thomas Edison's early phonographs. The museum also houses over 26 million documents, including a letter from bank robber Clyde Barrow to Ford, praising the speed of his automobiles. And Greenfield Village boasts 78 historic structures, from the original home of Noah Webster to the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop to Edison's Menlo Park laboratory complex.

The Henry Ford Museum Store offers visitors to Dearborn a selection of merchandise that reflects the historical appeal of the institution, including books, Americana, and handmade crafts. The store was first housed in a 2,600-square-foot exhibition gallery in the original 1920s-era building. But low ceilings, bad lighting, and a drab color scheme made the location an uninviting retail setting.

In 1999, the institution announced plans to add a 442-seat IMAX theater attraction to the main museum building. The museum's gift store would be relocated to a space adjacent to the theater lobby, allowing customers to access the store as they exited the theater. The new location would also be open to visitors who had not paid museum admission. The renovation would make the Henry Ford Museum Store the flagship retail establishment at the institution, which features other retailers and artisans throughout Greenfield Village.

Because a team of architects was already at work designing the theater, a new lobby, and a new ticketing area, the task fell to Terri Anderson, director of retail sales for HFMGV, to convince the institution's leadership that they needed an experienced retail design firm to plan the Museum Store.

"In doing research, I found that specialty retail designers make a big difference," says Anderson. "The design and layout of a gift store has a lot to do with how you market merchandise. Because we were to be located in a high-traffic area, this store had a lot of potential. By relocating the store near the entrance of the museum, it could become a destination shop for the rest of the community."

According to Anderson, JGA Inc. of Southfield, Michigan, had proposed a renovation of the Henry Ford Museum Gift Store some years earlier. Because it was a local firm, JGA had a high profile in the community as well as a solid history designing retail spaces for other museums. (The firm's design for the gift shop of the American Museum of Natural History won a Gifts & Dec Merchandising Achievement Award in 2000.) When the firm submitted its design concept, it was clear to Anderson that JGA was the way to go.

What most distinguished JGA's entry was that the designs it submitted used the building's environment to highlight merchandise. "They understood our product mix and how to incorporate the architecture of the museum into a lively, colorful showcase for the merchandise," says Anderson. The entire retail sales team at HFMGV worked with JGA, conducting tours of the institution's stores and storage areas, as well as responding to the firm's plans for merchandise placement, traffic flow, and cash/wrap locations. In the end, the firm presented three concepts and color palettes to the institution's leadership to reach a consensus on the final design.

The new Henry Ford Museum Gift Store is much warmer and brighter than the old exhibition gallery location had been. High ceilings provide a sense of unity in the 3,800-square-foot space, while a number of half-walls and arches provide discrete display sections and separate the distinct zones within the overall design plan.

The Inventors and Transportation Zone focuses on the kind of American ingenuity that was the original inspiration for Henry's Attic. This section features merchandise drawn from history, such as die-cast models of cars, planes, and trains; books on national icons such as Thomas Edison; and reproductions of signs and advertisements that are an enduring part of our cultural lexicon.

The Kids' Zone offers products for the younger visitors to HFMGV. The low tables and plastic bins of this section are filled with travel games, educational merchandise, books, and journals — as well as novelty items and plush toys — that relate to the themes of the exhibits and programs at the institution.

The remaining sections of the gift shop are the Souvenir Zone, which sells obligatory tourist-inspired merchandise like keychains and T-shirts, and the Artisans Zone, which features pieces of mouth-blown glassware and handmade pottery created in Greenfield Village. Lastly, the Henry Ford Museum Store maintains a feature section that highlights temporary merchandise related to the current feature at the IMAX theater.

According to Anderson, the response from museum staff and visitors has been extremely positive. In the first year since the new Henry Ford Museum Store opened, sales were up more than 65 percent over the previous year, and per capita sales had increased by more than a dollar. Many people were impressed by the new merchandise in the store. "In truth," says Anderson, "Most of the items on the shelves of the new store were the same that we had carried in the old location, but they were highlighted and displayed so much more effectively that they appeared to be brand new."

That's a lesson that any specialty retailer can take to the bank.