Welcome to the Botchery

I know what you’re thinking. ‘What the heck is the Botchery?’

The Botchery is a creative development in response to normal museums of what an abnormal museum could be. As with most museums, the Botchery is a collection of items displayed in various groupings not unlike any traditional museum. The only difference is that, at the Botchery, everything on display has been completely botched. The museum is filled with dysfunctional, poorly constructed, and even downright wrong things. Showcase after showcase, botched items are highlighted and celebrated.

Imagine one special event in which the many highlighted taxidermy projects are of those that have gone horribly wrong, animal faces twisted in unnatural positions, body parts that might not actually belong to the original animal, and the worse of all, poorly constructed bodies held barely together. This is the show of botched taxidermy projects.

In another week’s highlighted exhibits, the gallery shifts gears to highlight inventions and production pieces that had good intentions but became dangerous in the hands of humans. Shearing scissors powered by small gas engines or remember the classic heavy metal tipped lawn darts that could piece the human skull all too easily.

Every exhibit at the Botchery are pure examples of human error, poor design, and misguided ventures of destruction. This is the world of the Botchery. The only museum that may or may not be open depending on the conditions of the gallery’s equipment. If the lights won’t come on or the doors get jammed closed, the museum doesn’t open.

Where is this museum of human made horrors, you may ask? Nowhere. It doesn’t exist in any known universe in any form or fancy.

The Botchery was the product generated from a unique idea sparking tool called the ERY Method. A process so incredibly simple its genius. It was even said to be ‘stupidly brilliant.’ Designed to help transform service businesses into experience destinations, the tool leverages the core function or action of a business and filters it through a series of wordplay patterns to help generate place-making possibilities. Its experience design for the non-designer or small business owner, but not exclusive to small businesses.

Why do we need such a tool?

Consider this economic information of Experiences over Goods or Services. Reported on Les Roche’s site “…the experience economy is expected to be worth $12 billion by 2023. The value of experiences has taken precedence, with 78% of millennials choosing to spend money on an experience over products.” (https://lesroches.edu/blog/what-is-the-experience-economy/)

The impact of the rise of experiences is being deeply felt by the Goods and Services industries. Small shops can’t compete when the consumer chooses to do something over simply buying something. The loss of revenue is forcing a greater commoditization of these type businesses. The only solution is to compete on price…right? No.

The ERY Method tool was created out of the need to elevate services to the next economic level of value. To transform them from services competing on price into experiences competing on the consumer’s time. For, as Joe Pine and James Gilmore will share, time is the currency of experiences and consumers are willing to pay a premium to spend time with you if you can engage them, personalize your offering for them, and make the experience memorable.

Back to the Botchery, if there was such a place. What is the experience that would or could warrant a premium fee? The gathering of the human error. The rotating collections of dysfunctional, broken, poorly constructed, and downright strangest things ever produced. Like the sideshows of yesteryear, the Botchery brings the curious and the unique oddities to the main stage for your viewing pleasure. Now imagine that there is a special showing of botched items created by visitors, like yourself, in the Botchery’s own botched up workshop.

For a small additional or premium fee, or even as part of a membership, you can be guided by our lead Botchers to become a true artist of “botcherism”. A Botcher of fame and the creator of fine art (not) of screwed up art and weird stuff. Then, when there is enough botched stuff, a new collection is created and presented to paying audiences. Yes, your broken, half-fixed, taped up stuff takes the main stage under the hot lights, hopefully not melting any glue or tape. Your botched stuff may not be art, but it will be botched and on display assuming the lights stop flickering and stay on during the showing. Even the Botchery is botched up (on purpose as its part of the theme.)

Any service business can become an experience if the right tool is used. Any small businesses owner can shift from doing for the consumer and stage doing something with the customer all the while charging for the opportunity to do so and not have to completely change the original business. It just needs to stage it differently.

Well, it looks like my time is up here, at least I think it is. The clock on the wall looks like it’s working properly and informing me that it’s time to turn off the computer and pull out the pens and paper to help another surviving business become a thriving experience.