Pleasure Beach in Blackpool is well known for its traditional seaside amusement park atmosphere, wooden roller coasters, the Big One and its shows. Its merchandise and retail offer receive less attention, but Damian Jackson, the resort’s head of retail, describes retail as a way to extend the visitor’s day and carry the resort’s identity beyond the park, not as an obligatory gift shop at the exit.
Jackson oversees physical stores, e-commerce, ride photography and merchandise development. He works closely with Amanda Thompson from initial concept through design brief, product development, sampling and final approval. His account places retail inside the creative planning of the resort: every range, he says, needs a reason to exist, a clear customer and an authentic connection to Pleasure Beach rather than a logo applied to a generic product.
From visitor segments to a tiered range
The resort serves families on a first visit, school groups with limited spending money, teenage friends and couples, international tourists, lifelong fans and serious coaster enthusiasts, often on the same day. Their reasons to buy differ. A family may want a traditional souvenir, an enthusiast an accurate collectable tied to a ride, teenagers confectionery, accessories or trend-led apparel, and heritage-minded guests nostalgia, craftsmanship and stories. Jackson says Pleasure Beach combines sales data with time in shops, conversations with teams and guest feedback to understand not only what sells but why.
That leads to a portfolio built around customer missions, price points and levels of engagement. It spans impulse purchases such as confectionery, magnets, keyrings and badges; practical items such as bottles, bags and ponchos; fashion-led apparel and accessories; children’s products and plush; and premium or limited-edition pieces for enthusiasts and collectors. The range also balances attraction-specific merchandise with broader Pleasure Beach branding, licensed lines, playful products and heritage collections. Jackson presents “something for everyone” as a carefully edited range in which each product has a purpose, target customer and appropriate price, not unlimited choice.
Attraction-led design and the Aviktas example
The Aviktas range is the clearest illustration in Jackson’s account. Instead of applying the ride logo to a set of products, the team built the range around the attraction’s visual world: a golden snake, emerald colouring, mythology and a sense of mystery. Retail was involved early in the attraction’s development, which Jackson says is when merchandise is strongest. The range also included 50 models priced at £250 each, which sold out; he cites this as evidence that authenticity, detail and a strong attraction connection can support premium limited-edition collectables.
Product development begins with Jackson and Thompson discussing the attraction, its audience and the opportunity for a range. They consider story, visual identity, emotional impact, fashion relevance and long-term importance within the wider portfolio. ICON, for example, lends itself to a clean, contemporary, fashion-led treatment, while heritage attractions such as the Big Dipper and Grand National draw on archive artwork, engineering details, nostalgia and generations of guest memories. Materials, colours, proportions, trims, embroidery, packaging and in-shop presentation all matter, as do intended customer, expected demand, price points, production quantities, lead times and sales locations. The result, Jackson says, must be creatively distinctive and commercially viable.
Heritage, licensing and exclusivity
Nostalgia carries particular weight at a resort that has been part of family traditions for 130 years. Pleasure Beach draws on an archive of attraction imagery, typography, posters, architecture and stories, reinterpreting it through contemporary apparel, homeware and collectables. Jackson says the aim is not to make everything look old-fashioned but to use authentic history in a fresh and desirable way. Playful assets do a different job: humour, colour, character and unexpected ideas engage children, families and casual visitors, giving the retail identity a broader base than ride logos alone.
Licensed attractions, including Nickelodeon and Aardman properties such as Wallace and Gromit, require partnership among Pleasure Beach, the IP owner and approved suppliers. Jackson describes the strongest relationships as collaborative: the licensor protects brand integrity while the resort explains what visitors respond to and how products work in an attraction environment. To compete with general online retailers, Pleasure Beach pursues relevance and exclusivity through exclusive designs, attraction references, location-specific details, personalisation and products that celebrate the visit. He says guests increasingly seek exclusive, authentic and considered products, including attraction-specific merchandise, premium apparel, subtle branding, collectables, limited editions and items with a clear story, as well as pieces they can use or wear beyond the visit. Generic souvenirs and heavily branded products without a story have become less compelling, although keyrings, magnets, mugs and confectionery remain important and must keep evolving in design, quality, presentation and relevance.
Operations, service and the wider retail experience
Jackson is careful to note that none of this works without operational discipline. Stock accuracy and product availability are, in his description, probably the least glamorous and most critical parts of the business: a strong product cannot generate revenue if it sits in a stockroom, has not been reordered, is incorrectly priced or is missing where guests expect it. Deliveries, stock movement, replenishment, pricing, signage and daily compliance checks protect the guest experience, while clear pricing builds trust and effective replenishment prevents missed purchases.
Supplier relationships follow a similar logic. Jackson treats the best suppliers as creative and commercial partners rather than manufacturers, sharing the story, ambition and intended customer behind a range. Reliability in quality, communication, lead times, compliance, pricing and consistency matters, and long-term relationships allow both sides to be more ambitious. In stores, Pleasure Beach uses price architecture so guests can enter a range at different levels and encourages trade-up through better materials, detail, exclusivity, personalisation or bundles. Product adjacencies—such as a plush character and an outfit, or a ride photograph and a frame or multi-photo offer—support additional purchases.
The resort also wants retail to feel like another chapter of the day. That means considering retail during attraction, event and guest-journey planning, and using themed environments, product demonstrations, characterful displays, confectionery experiences, personalisation, ride photography and interactive selling. Jackson points to activities at the Big Big Bubble Shop as an example of retail that is not passive. Shops are meant to reflect their location: a thrill-ride store should feel different from a children’s character store, a heritage collection or a confectionery outlet. Staff act as hosts, storytellers and brand ambassadors who demonstrate products, explain ranges and gather guest requests that may not yet appear in sales reports. Gift wrapping and personalisation add value for guests who want a purchase to feel personal or significant and cannot get the same service from a general online marketplace.
E-commerce extends the relationship year-round, letting enthusiasts follow launches, previous visitors reconnect with memories and guests who cannot travel to Blackpool buy selected products. Jackson says the online store supports social media and email communication, seasonal campaigns and testing of interest, while providing insight into demand that may differ from in-park behaviour. The overall picture is of retail used as a strategic layer across product, place, people and operations. Jackson’s account does not claim that merchandise alone creates loyalty; it shows how a resort can make retail coherent with the attraction experience, provided the products are distinctive, the range is edited and the basics are consistently executed.