How to choose gifts for a museum gift shop...

There’s something rather lovely about seeing a Colour Palette in the place it was designed to celebrate.

Over the past few years I’ve watched The Colour Palette Company grow from an idea about telling the story of a place through six colours into a collection of gifts sold in some brilliant museum, gallery and visitor attraction shops across the UK.

You’ll now find Colour Palette gifts at the Museum of Liverpool, King Richard III Visitor Centre in Leicester, RAMM in Exeter, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Millennium Gallery in Sheffield, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Tullie, Carlisle, and Coventry Transport Museum.

For me, that’s a big deal.

I started The Colour Palette Company with a simple design idea: six colours that immediately mean something to people who know a place. The design never changes. The stories within those six colours do.

And that makes the palettes particularly at home in museum and gallery shops.

Gifts that actually belong to the place

I’ve always wanted Colour Palette gifts to feel different from the usual souvenir.

They’re designed for people who know a city, people visiting for the first time, people returning home and people who simply spot one of the references and smile.

Six colours can tell a surprising amount of a story.

A building. A local delicacy. A famous landmark. An industrial material. A much-loved institution. Something peculiar that only somebody who really knows the place will understand.

Put those six colours together and you have a little visual portrait of a city.

That works particularly well for museum shops, gallery stores, tourism organisations and visitor attractions looking for distinctive gifts with a genuine connection to their location.

Wholesale without filling the stockroom

I also know that taking on a new product can be a risk for an independent shop or museum retailer.

That’s why I’ve deliberately kept our wholesale minimum order quantities low.

I’d much rather a venue tried a sensible quantity of Colour Palette gifts, discovered what its visitors respond to and came back for more.

Our turnaround is usually around eight working days, which means a museum, gallery or visitor attraction can choose a palette and potentially have Colour Palette gifts on its shelves within a couple of weeks.

And if they sell? Give me a shout and we’ll get some more made.

Not just museums and galleries

Our wholesale offer isn’t limited to major cultural venues.

I’m equally keen to work with independent gift shops, tourism organisations, arts and crafts market traders and small retailers looking for something colourful and genuinely different.

Low minimum orders make the palettes particularly useful for smaller businesses. You don’t need to commit to boxes and boxes of stock just to find out whether something works for your customers.

Start small. See what people pick up. Take it from there.

Could your place be next?

There are now Colour Palettes celebrating places across Britain and beyond, with the collection continuing to grow.

If there’s already a palette for your town, city or destination, getting it into your shop can be remarkably quick.

And if you’re a museum, gallery, visitor attraction, tourism organisation, independent retailer or market trader looking for distinctive wholesale gifts, I’d love to hear from you.

The Colour Palette Company is a small Birmingham business with a very simple idea at its heart.

Six colours. One place. Hundreds of stories.

And increasingly, lots of very colourful museum gift shops too.

Interested in becoming a Colour Palette stockist? Get in touch to ask about wholesale prices, products and our low minimum order quantities. Email stacey@thecolourpalettecompany.com