2019 Q2 Sales Update: Spring Ahead!

2019 Q2 Sales Update: Spring Ahead!

As National Park Week closed out the month of April, Eastern National hit the midway point for the fiscal year. While we gear up for the summer season and increased park visitation, it’s a good time to see where sales performance is through the first half of the year. For the second month in a row, sales have met budget. Year to date we have a budget shortfall of $1.3 million, mostly due to the government shutdown. While we are starting to move in the right direction, we have a long road to recovery.

Here are some highlights for our second quarter sales report:

• Following the September 2017 hurricanes, El Yunque National Forest and San Juan National Historic Site have slowly been recovering. Year-to-date sales in Puerto Rico are $437,000 or 30 percent below pre-storm levels.
• You may have heard about a fire on Christmas Eve that damaged the visitor center at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. This month, we reopened a new interpretive sales area at the Old Orchard Museum to continue to provide educational products and services while the visitor center is repaired near Theodore Roosevelt’s “Summer White House.”
• The city of Boston closed Faneuil Hall Marketplace for renovations to the building throughout 2017-2018. Visitor services and store operations moved into a temporary space at State Street, and the store underwent a major facelift in the new permanent space. With the newly renovated store and dramatically enhanced floor plan to improve the visitor experience at Faneuil Hall, Boston National Historical Park is now up 11.3 percent over prior year.
• As the new Statue of Liberty Museum at Statue of Liberty National Monument prepared to open its doors, sales at the Statue and Ellis Island grew exponentially each month. Year to date, these two stores are up 18.7 percent over prior year.
• This was a record-setting year for the Cherry Blossom Festival and the Kite Festival held at the National Mall and Memorial Parks. The Eastern National pop-up tent at the Tidal Basin earned $173,000 over the 16-day event, and nearly 1,100 kites were sold in under four hours thanks to perfect kite-flying weather at the Washington Monument.

Each of these success stories is a credit to the planning and collaboration among Eastern National staff and partners at each location. Our shared mission of providing quality educational experiences, products, and services to the visitors of public lands is the driving force behind recovering operations following periods of store and park closures.

We anxiously await the store re-openings at Acadia National Park and Cape Hatteras National Seashore in the next month, following visitor center renovations and enhanced store designs with increased sales areas and new product assortments. At the end of April, company sales performance was 9 percent below budget. March and April met budget, and we are preparing to spring ahead!