The Laie group is rapidly recovering activity in the 30 museum-stores it has spread across 25 institutions throughout Spain, after the considerable decline its business suffered due to the reduction in the number of foreign visitors, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Activity in these establishments, especially those that receive more international visitors, is only at 50% of what was usual in 2019, "because the first half of 2021 was still very bad for tourism," explains Montserrat Moragas, general director of the group and one of the four founders. "There have been local visitors and from the rest of Europe, but American and Asian tourists are still not traveling and the impact on the most international museums is still very great," she adds, and specifies that in museums with more local visitors, the recovery of activity is higher, "but we are nowhere near that of 2019."
Laie manages museum-stores in Barcelona, Madrid, Zaragoza, Mallorca, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Granada, Seville, and Malaga, for public and private institutions, including in Barcelona, the CCCB Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (since 1999) ---which is the only one that can be considered a second bookstore---, Museu Picasso, CosmoCaixa, CaixaFòrum, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Macba), as well as spaces in Park Güell, La Pedrera, the Sagrada Família and in the Recinte Modernista de l'Hospital de Sant Pau.
Despite the ravages of the pandemic, the group maintains its commitment to this business, which it entered 25 years ago, and for which it has new strategies in mind, always linked to what society demands. "We are seeing how buyers' interest in local and more sustainable products is also being transferred to museum stores," says Moragas and specifies that "it is increasingly growing and makes sense, since our stores represent an institution, but also a place, that is, they make sense because they are within a cultural institution very linked to the territory."
For this reason, Laie is looking for local suppliers "but it is complex because we have a lot of products and we have to find producers who adjust to the price and quality we need, because since these are very specific items for each institution, what we often need are short series. This is an advantage for the local supplier," according to Moragas.
In this sense, one of the options gaining traction is to incorporate more gastronomic products into the museum-shops, where there are currently few items of this type, "because it is interesting and, furthermore, it is an appealing product to buy because it has packaging that reminds you where you have been and also if it is for a gift, you know you can get it right and we can provide that with very local products that reflect part of our gastronomic culture."
The future involves expanding products where culture and quality prevail, with a diversified and personalized offerWithout going any further, there is the experience of the establishment managed by Laie in the Sant Pau Modernist Complex, where at the request of the institution itself you can findjams from the artisan workshop Les Eroles, an establishment with a lot of history located in Castell d'Aro(Baix Empordà). This article has the singularity that it is a small production of bitter orange marmalade that comes from the centenary orange trees ---dating from 1914--- that are in the garden of the Modernist Enclosure itself and that are harvested every year to make the marmalade.
Moragas defends that what is important right now is to recover the activity of the shops that, before the health crisis, employed about 250 people, some of whom are still affected by an ERTE that had to be applied to overcome the situation. Forecasts indicate that full normality will not arrive until 2023, since next year, if the health context is more favorable, they expect to approach the turnover of 2019.
"The last pandemic year we have suffered terribly, but the institutions have understood the situation and have supported us by adapting the canon established in the contracts to the economic reality because, without an audience, it was impossible for us to face the corresponding payments," indicates the general director of Laie.
Moragas indicates that the group's strategy, "where profitability is obviously necessary," involves acting long-term "expanding the focus of products where culture and quality rule, diversifying the offer a lot and personalizing it even more."
The group had 250 people working in cultural establishments before the pandemicRegarding new opportunities to expand the business, Moragas believes that all of them must be analyzed but that the context is not favorable, nor does she foresee taking over the management of shops of institutions outside of Spain because "each shop is different and each shop needs a different project of offer, etc... all this taken abroad would be very complex, that's why for now we are not interested, although if an opportunity arises we will study it hand in hand with a partner.
The Laie group team, about 50 people, always works with an international vision regarding new cultural and museum trends. An internationalization that is also felt in the Pau Claris bookstore, which operates under the baton of Conxita Guixà, also one of its four founders. "A humanities bookstore ---in the classic sense of the term--- and international because we don't care about the language in which a work is written if it is interesting, that's why our distribution in the store is by subject and should be able to satisfy anyone who has an interest in any book and of any type, from children's, to historical, to cinema, for example."