Selling the Experience

Fans have their reasons for lining up to buy souvenirs at Blue Man Group’s live stage shows. A DVD rekindles the euphoria that filled the theater; a T-shirt proclaims the wearer's affinity for the entertainers' trance-inducing rhythmic antics.

To supply that merchandise -- along with official key chains, postcards, shot glasses, skateboards and backpacks -- New York-based Blue Man Group Productions operates stores at the five theaters that present ongoing Blue Man shows. Sean Slattery serves as retail manager of the store attached to The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas and acts as unofficial merchandise manager for the entire Blue Man Group retailing effort.

The stores range from 400 sq. ft. in Boston to 2,800 sq. ft. in Las Vegas. The New York, Chicago and Boston stores are located inside the theaters, so only ticketed patrons of the shows can shop them; the Las Vegas store is open to the public, as is the one at Universal Studios in Orlando.

Central storage, centralized purchasing
For help in getting merchandise to the stores, Slattery turns to Webgistix Corp. Slattery buys the merchandise from manufacturers and distributors and has it shipped to Webgistix warehouses in Olean and Allegany, N.Y., and Henderson, Nev., which are well-positioned geographically to ship to the Blue Man Group stores across the country.

Keeping select merchandise in one warehouse and not the others can make sense because items that sell well in some parts of the country might not in other areas, Slattery says. By keeping those goods in the warehouse nearest the successful market, Blue Man Group cuts shipping costs.

Sling drawstring Blue Man backpacks, for example, sell well on the East Coast, especially Boston, but “I can‘t give them away in Vegas,” Slattery says. In another example, New York, Chicago and Boston use the same show program, but not Las Vegas.

Slattery views the storage situation as especially particularly acute because of the quirkiness of Blue Man Group retail spaces. “In a casino or theater, a square foot is worth a lot of money,” he says.

Central storage allows the the retail spaces to offer a wider variety of merchandise. If, for example, magnets must be ordered in lots of 2,000, a lack of central storage would mean stocking only one type of magnet in each store. But because Slattery can send 2,000-count shipments to the warehouses, he can order multiple varieties of magnets and dole them out, as needed, to all five stores. “All these little cool products that we really pride ourselves on -- they would disappear” without central storage, he says. It also enables the stores to sell bulky merchandise (like backpacks or fully assembled skateboards) that otherwise would require too much storage space.

One-site inventory control
When stock runs low at any of the stores. Slattery logs onto the Webgistix site and orders what’s needed. “It's like online shopping, except I already own the product,” he says. “You put your order in for all the products you want, hit the checkout button and tell Webgistix where you want to send it.”

Webgistix’s site offers more than ordering, however. “It allows me to look at what we're doing with [the inventory] and analyze it,” Slattery says.

The solution affords Blue Man Group “complete visibility into the supply chain,” says Webgistix CEO Joseph DiSorbo. “They can see it in multiple locations in real time, 24/7. They can see order flow, when everything was shipped and the cost.”

The Webgistix site also provides Slattery with reports that help manage inventory. Alerts can be set up to warn when merchandise lines fall below predetermined levels. “I can pull the report any day I want, but, in addition, every Monday each warehouse automatically sends me a low-inventory report,” he says. Besides reviewing inventory levels, he can check how much he’s spent on shipping during a particular month or find out how well the stores are performing.

Webgistix ships the same day the order arrives, and clients can choose to ship via UPS, FedEx or any other carrier. Blue Man Group pays for shipping and a handling and packing fee that Slattery characterizes as being “very inexpensive.” Blue Man Group also pays a monthly fee tied to the volume of merchandise the retailer stores in the Webgistix warehouses.

Expansion plans call for offering merchandise in a kiosk accompanying a Blue Man Group national tour this fall -- an operation Slattery says will be more extensive than “the typical T-shirts at a rock concert.” A long-term Blue Man Group engagement, scheduled to begin this summer on the Norwegian Epic cruise ship, will have a “sizeable” retail operation, he says. “We’ll have limited items -- but the best,” Slattery says of the tour and ship retail operations.