2021 calendar displayed in my kitchen
I was skeptical about making and ordering a series of calendars to sell for this coming year for a few different reasons. One being that my presence and exposure online is limited, as I have only been publicly displaying my work for a few months now. Second being that we are well into the 21'st century at this point and many people keep their calendars on their phone. Third, and lastly, it is impossible for me to predict how many calendars I might need to initially obtain for those that may want one leading into the new year.
To address the second concern, I simply ran a poll on my Instagram story to get an idea of how many of my current followers even enjoy having physical calendars. I had a little over a hundred responses to my poll and to my surprise the majority percentage of my followers still use physical calendars. 79% to be exact, with the remaining 21% indicating that they do not like physical calendars. It is possible that this is simply a reflection of the community that is more interested in the arts and landscape photography. However, after running this story I started seriously looking into what it would take to get a calendar put together.
The first concern that I had with my online presence being limited right now I was able to alleviate when I started to tackle the third concern of how many I should have made for an initial run. The basics of it are the more you order, the cheaper it is for the supplier to produce for you, so the cheaper it costs you per calendar. Keeping prices low would be important for my customers as nobody wants to spend money that they do not need to. So even if they loved the 2021 calendar, the price needed to be right. From this I did some math to determine the risk/reward for various numbers of calendars. The number I initially ordered allows them to be sold for $20 which is what it costs for a generic calendar from many of my local stores. For those reading this that might have looked at the 2021 calendar listing in the store, or already ordered one, you might have noticed the note in the description stating that once the calendars from this first run are sold out, the price will increase to $26 for those that still want one. This is due to further orders of the calendar not being able to come with a bulk discount. Still not too bad however for a calendar filled with photos that are not generic.
With these details figured out, now I could move into the fun portion of this whole ordeal. Going through my photos from the last year-ish and picking out a variety of the good ones. This included many from my current portfolio as I figured a calendar would be a cool way to showcase them in a smaller and functional format. Take a look below at what made the cut for each month in the calendar and let me know what you think!
Calendar Cover Photo
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Some efforts were made to fit the photos to the particular time of year and season the month is for in the Pacific Northwest. However, some of the photos were paired with a specific month simply because they fit the rest of the calendar well.
Some of you may have noticed that the store portion of my website has changed recently. I will probably write another blog post on this change at some point, but this change was released with the release of the calendar in the webstore. The original art store for selling prints of my photos was integrated with a company called "Order a Print" and they handled the orders for me. Now I work with a company called "Saal Digital". In a short summary, Order a Print's service came with two issues. First, and most important being a landscape photographer using quality equipment, the print quality is not nearly high enough for the price. Secondly, the cart for the Order a Print webstore does not integrate with any other carts which would prevent me from offering you the calendars for sale while also keeping my website clean and easy to navigate.
A closeup of the calendar, and the month of July
I am happy to announce that the calendar is produced by Saal Digital as well, and the print and material quality is excellent. The style of calendar was chosen to try and keep the calendars more compact for use on a fridge or smaller wall space, but without sacrificing the ability to make notes on the days of the month. A matte paper was used instead of a glossy paper so that it is easy to write these things in and so that handling of the calendar does not leave fingerprints behind.
If you happen to be in the market for a new calendar for the 2021 year feel free to consider this one and let me know what you think of it. Until the next post, have a good one!