Theme souvenir store at Hong Kong Space Museum closes after losing renewal bid to Commercial Press

On a sweltering Wednesday afternoon at the Hong Kong Space Museum, children and their parents pack into a souvenir store where they will buy astronomy toys and planet models, before it closes for good. Exploration Store, located in the busy Tsim Sha Tsui museum, was a must-visit attraction for students and children fascinated by science and space. “We used to visit the store every time we came. It had many interesting things that you wouldn’t find elsewhere,” says Irene Chan, who visited with her 10-year-old son, whose favourite item in the store was a model of the solar system. “It’s a pity that it will be gone.” After losing the bid to renew the lease of the 400 sq ft area, the store shut permanently on Wednesday, to be replaced by the Commercial Press – one of Hong Kong’s oldest and largest publishers – which offered a price double the previous one. The Post has contacted the publisher to find out its plans for the premises. Parents hope the new owner will also come up with science-related products and toys that will inspire the young minds of their children, rather than just providing another ordinary bookstore in the city’s only museum that stages unique exhibitions to introduce rockets, spacecraft, spacesuits and so on. Plans for bigger Hong Kong Science Museum to be finalised by end of the year Exploration Store owner James Lim describes the closure as a loss of something “priceless”. “The store was not just a small business, but a place with local cultural characteristics. It was of educational value as it inspired children in science and space,” he says. Lim opened the store in 2013 to match the theme of the cultural facility frequented by astronomy enthusiasts, especially children. A salesman says the shop had more than 100 visitors a day on average, consisting mostly of children and teenagers who came with their parents. Apart from locals, tourists from mainland China and other areas, especially Southeast Asia, also frequented it. The store’s products were diverse – ranging from large globes to small key chains featuring planets. Telescopes and space models were among the most popular, Lim says. When Hong Kong’s Space Museum opened in 1980 it was the best in the region To inspire the youngsters and open their eyes with interesting, high-quality space-featured products, Lim travelled to various countries to learn from local businesses and brought home trendy products. One of the most popular was the astronaut ice cream – a slab of ready-to-eat dehydrated ice cream taken by astronauts on long-duration space flights. Lim found it in the United States, which, compared with regular ice cream, could be kept at room temperature without melting and tasted more brittle but still soft. The special ice cream had different flavours and each cost HK$55 (US$7). “Hong Kong is an international city. I wanted to establish a theme store comparable to the best ones in the world,” he says. Lim says he also wanted to promote STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – through the store. Angela Wong used to take her seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son to the store after visiting exhibitions at the museum. “They liked coming here, putting their hands on those products, even if they were not bought. They could learn from them,” she says. Space Museum’s exhibit halls set for relaunch after HK$32 million facelift The now-closed store in the space museum was the third of its kind opened by Lim – the other two are located inside the Hong Kong Science Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui East and Hong Kong International Airport respectively. But Lim fears these two stores will also not be able to survive in the face of competition with big companies. He says it is difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to win in the government’s bidding mechanism and worries they might be easily elbowed out of the market by deep-pocketed big firms. “We need a diverse market with not only big companies, but also small, niche players which excel in their sectors,” he says. “I hope the government will provide more support for small businesses to promote local cultural products.”