Museums cash in on the past

Efforts of innovation

Meanwhile, more domestic museums have won over consumers due to their continuous development of innovative products.

The late Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei designed the new Suzhou Museum in Jiangsu province which opened in 2006. It soon became a city landmark.

In 2020, the museum produced a series of products with quotes from Pei, printed bilingually, in commemoration of the first anniversary of his death. The design team, before developing the final creations, had read Pei's books and watched hours of interview videos in order to select 56 of his key observations about architecture and life.

The museum also owns a 480-year-old Chinese wisteria, planted by painter and calligrapher Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Since 2013, the museum started to sell seeds from it for buyers to plant. Only 1,000 boxes are available every year, each of which has three seeds inside.

To design good products, according to Jiang Han, head of the museum's creative cultural products business, one needs to "have passion for the job, understand deeply the museum's exhibits and their history, and hold an insight into the industry".

Bookmarks, magnets and key rings used to dominate the museum's best-seller list.

In recent years, however, the museum's customers have cultivated a preference for a more varied selection of products due to the consumption upgrade in China－items like mugs and aromatherapy products, for example.

"It means a variety of products should be designed to meet the demands of customers, many of whom are youngsters," Jiang says. "Our designers were all born in the 1990s, and they can put themselves into the shoes of their peers."