2009 SAFE Calendar !

[leahlady]

I have committed to taking this over - I have a great (and affordable) printer lined up and am excited to design this. It will look classy and awesome, I promise

Once I get in contact w/ Julia I will have more information - I'm wondering if SAFE has a budget at all for this - the idea of getting donations in exchange for advertising is a great one if not!

[schwung]

I am sure we are willing to invest some in this as long as it will be profitable. We don't know how many will sell so we need to not bite off more than we can chew. I would say just put together some proposals on costs and quantity and then we can discuss it.

[leahlady]

It is MUCH cheaper to order more - $9 each for a run of 250, and $2.80 each for a run of 1000. $1.80 each for 2000.

Printing is a tricky business! Spend more initially and we potentially make WAAY more. We can sell a calendar for $25 - we could either make $14 profit from each one, or $23....

The question is, how many can we sell?

[huskiesnhorses]

I know I brought this up at the group meeting when we had it at my house but I will bring it up again for the rest.
When I was with Pasado's - this idea was kicked around alot but the decision was always made not to do it because it was unclear at best whether this would be worth it.

Animal people are regularly sent free calendars by the big humane societies in order to try to get them to GIVE a donation.

Recently - Pasado's published their first calendar -but they got the Seahawks to pose with the animals for an added draw. No idea how successful this has been for them - and they may well have had much of the costs donated.

I have really no idea whether it's worth doing or not. I just wanted to throw in some things to think about.

[leahlady]

Well.. I guess the only way to decide is to ask:

WHO WOULD BUY THE CALENDAR? and HOW MANY CAN YOU SELL?

This won't be one of those ugly, free calendars. Any ads on it will be very tasteful and at the back. This will be well printed, on nice stock, and beautifully designed. This will be a calendar someone would love to receive as a gift and display in their home!

[huskiesnhorses]

I wouldn't mind buying a calendar for all of my sponsors for the show as a thank you but no way am I going to spend $25 per calendar. If the price were $15 a calendar - I would do it - and that would be around 11 or 12 calendars.

So - that's a depends kinda answer.

[coconut]

I generally spend about $10 a piece on the each of the instructors that have me come in to their classes for kit presentations. That's about 15-20 so I could be talked into some too if they were $15ish. The upside to having them go to local folks would be that they have contact with local folks who might be able to help us somehow. I also have probably 5-10 other folks who would purchase one. I just had a request to see if we had holiday cards w/our horses on them as a fundraiser from my friend in NY.

I'd do those too from my business...if they were available! I send out probably 100 professionally and at least another 50 cards personally.

[jodycat]

At the approximately $15 price, I would buy a number of them for gifts - seven to ten.

I too wish there were holiday cards to purchase.

[leahlady]

The problem is, at $9 a calendar cost, selling for $15 hardly turns a profit.

We could do cards instead. Or, we could do cards plus a smaller calendar. Or, a poster-style calendar, which would be much cheaper and different than other calendars for sale.

Check out the options at Uprinting.com , this is the best and most affordable online print house I have found.

[huskiesnhorses]

$6.00 x 250 is $1,500 and that's nothing to sneeze at - that's the profit SAFE made from the garage sale and it's a lot less filthy, frustrating and aggravating. (unless you don't sell enough)
And I am thinking you will sell a whole lot less you if pump that price up - bottom line - I don't need nor want something that I am just going to have to throw out.
Either people have free calendars or most people have electronic devices to provide calendars. No way would I ever spend 20 - 25 bucks for a calendar - even if I know the animals personally.

[oneidea]

My dog food provider (http://www.darwinspet.com/) creates a desktop calendar using 12 of its client's photos every year. They give them away to their customers, so I suspect they are relatively low cost to produce.

They are printed on 14 sheets of gloss paper and fit in a CD case that acts as a desktop display (12 months, plus a cover sheet and credits page... SAFE might even consider including a 15th page that could be a mail in donation form).

They look something like this:

www.photojojo.com/content/diy/jewel-case-photo-calendar/

[Whitewolf821]

So I visited uprinting.com and I see greeting cards as a much more profitable endeavor. Christmas is coming, and we could group them into packages of 10.

Here's my quick math (could be wrong; it is Friday after all )

500 Greeting Cards - $158.61
Divide into 50 groups of 10
Sell for $15 for a package of 10 (only $1.50 a card which isn't bad) - $750

Total profit - $591.39

And I'm certain we could sell more than 50 sets of cards. Profit goes up the more we order! Now the only thing I didn't see is if that set of 500 cards has to be all one picture or if we could mix it up a bit. Also, does that include the envelopes? I can't tell and I need to get back to work!

[leahlady]

I have a few different ideas on this. I'm leaning away from doing a regular style calendar - I have looked around and you can get a really nicely photographed one for $11.99 . If we do a calendar at all.. I'm thinking about something like this: www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/436891.html?cm_id=3000.422 (be sure to click "alternate view")

It would be much more unique + beautiful... and I could make a much smaller quantity of these at home. I could do pre-orders so we wouldn't end up with extra. I feel like this has come down to the last minute, and we would really be stuck if we didn't sell all the calendars. It seems like a huge investment and too much of a risk at this point, I would feel much better about doing pre orders. $1800 seems like a ton of money to spend, especially going into this scary winter.

The only thing about the cards is that we can't print on the back - which is where we could have information about SAFE. It is almost pointless to have images of the horses without a description. I have card templates and paper at home, so I could also do a pre-order and make these. I finished my paddock digging/pasture re-seeding this weekend so I will have the whole weekend to work on this (besides for halloween parties).

Liz.. I will PM you if you don't see this... but would you still want to "donate" some of your images? I know you have some really nice ones of Deeds, and that fantastic one of Honeycutt cantering in the sunlight.

Monica.. could you send me a high res. version of the image Phoenix leading Sinatra? That one absolutely needs to be included!

So.. sound good?? I just felt like I needed to make a some decisions! I will start taking pre-orders immediately!

[coconut]

I Like the pages on that link, Leah. I assume you'd do a similar layout but with SAFE horse photos in the background, right? Would this be that same type of calendar that fits into the CD case?

And are you saying the pricepoint would be $11.99?

I will take 20 to start off with....would we be able to get more later if needed since you're doing the printing?

AND.....
Can we get cards with Phoenix/Sinatra w/Santa Hats magically added? I would send those to ALL the beauty schools in Washington! Oh, How much for cards?

So many questions... far too much time on my hands!

[jaybird]

this is the card I did last year for Christmas gift donations: