The Met’s satellite store at New York’s JFK Airport, Terminal 8
Last month, the Metropolitan Museum announced that it was closing 15 of its “under-performing satellite shops around the country” and had also “instituted a museum-wide hiring freeze.” (Eight of the 15 stores had already closed.)
The action seemed counterintuitive, because shops are supposed to help the bottom line. In fact, they’ve been hurting it, and the problem predates the current global financial crisis.
Yesterday the Met issued a further anouncement that it was cutting merchandising staff by 74 positions, “effective immediately. These staff reductions…are in addition to the 53 positions eliminated in recent months through the closings of eight satellite Museum stores.”
The museum’s statement acknowledged “significant recent downturns in its merchandising sales.” But the fiscal deficiencies of the glitzy boutiques that hawk a huge array of often pricey reproductions (not to mention
adaptations of Met objects for scarfs, cufflinks and other wearables) are not all that recent: After running a neglible profit in fiscal 2007 ($318,000 on gross revenues of $77.64 million), the Met’s retail operations were in the red for fiscal 2008 (which ended June 30).
Let’s go to the Met’s 2007-8 annual report. (Scroll to the last page.)
Note Q in the financial statement shows that in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, merchandise operations produced $75.55 million in revenue. Deducting merchandise costs and expenses of $76.99 million, retail operations yielded a net LOSS of $1.44 million.
Apparently the mere job freeze announced last month for non-retail areas is now deemed insufficient to meet current economic challenges: In yesterday’s statement, the Met revealed that it “also anticipates the additional need to reduce the rest of its full- and part-time work force by approximately 10% in all other areas of its operations [including, presumably, curatorial staff] before…July 1.”
It’s sad for Tom Campbell that, through no fault of his own, his most visible acts since becoming the Met’s new director in January involve major cutbacks and a new advertising campaign.