The Tank Museum Shop wins – Best Online Shop and Shop of the Year

The Tank Museum Shop has scooped two major industry awards. The wins follow its impressive financial performance during the pandemic.

The Dorset museum won Best Online Shop at the recent The Cultural Enterprises Awards. It won Shop of the Year at The Museum and Heritage Awards in July.

Tankmuseumshop.org, which was developed with Bournemouth based JD Ecommerce, achieved over £1m of sales in 2020 compared with just over £100,000 in 2019.

The Tank Museum Shop has loyal supporters

Simon Prager, Head of Commercial Operations said: “Winning this award for The Best Online Shop and Shop of the Year is testament to the hard work of our whole team.

Nik Wyness, Head of Marketing added: “Loyal support from an existing social media audience has proved to be paramount in the success of the Museum’s Online Shop.

“At the beginning of 2020, we already had over 240,000 subscribers on YouTube and an audience of 310,000 followers on Facebook. This gave us one of the biggest social media presences of any Museum outside of the US.

“When lockdown hit and the Museum was closed, we were able to go these engaged audiences and ask them to support us.

“Product placement in our Curator Q&A’s and on the end of our YouTube videos, as well as ‘Product of the Day’ posts on Facebook enabled us to reach our audience in a way that was in-keeping with The Tank Museum brand.”

Sherman tank slippers!

The Museum used its unique collection to develop products specifically for the online audience. Sherman tank slippers quickly became 2020’s best-seller! And the Curator’s dog, Finn, also became an unexpected star, boosting the sale of collie puppets and dog toys.

Because of increased website traffic and a larger product range resulted in the need for a complete online shop rebuild. So it  provided better functionality and easier navigation. Users can navigate to any product within three-clicks.

A combination of the new website, pricing and digital advertising attracted a multitude of new customers. It generated sustainable growth, protecting at least 20 jobs and creating four new ones.

Judges from the Association of Cultural Enterprise commented: “Absolutely astonishing achievements from The Tank Museum. They have gone above and beyond to connect with their audience and create opportunities for creative commerce. Thinking outside the box and responding to opportunity”.

The Museum and Heritage Awards Judges said: “For their outstanding performance with brave moves at critical times, this winner demonstrated stunning business achievements. This with relatively small investment and in the direst circumstances imaginable.”

The Tank Museum is on the shortlist for a further award. It is in the running as the Website of the Year at the UK Digital Growth Awards.

To see the award-winning Online Shop visit www.tankmuseumshop.org.