2014 Color Calendar

[NW Mailing List]

It is pretty simple math, the 2013 calendar barely broke even, from the numbers Alex showed it was  a decline in sales roughly 11 percent from 2011 to 2012, the higher cost resulted in sales that dropped roughly 38 percent from 2012 to 2013. Selling just over 270 calendars with the break even at 260 would mean even a 5 percent drop in sales would make it a money losing proposition.

Any product like a calendar, book, publication of any sort has high overhead in the form of hours, if those happen to be volunteer hours, like gathering the photos, writing captions, those hours are not billed to the job. However, to determine a true profit or loss from a project, those need to be factored in as if they were paid hours. While N&WHS is a non-profit, like many groups, you can only afford to do projects that have significant historical significance, serve a need to a large audience or, heaven forbid, make some money for the group to operate with.

Too many groups operate with the attitude of do it at any cost, but good management has to make some difficult decisions when it comes to the fiscal state of a group. Having been a part of management for such for a number of years makes you realize how tough it is to earn that money, and makes you more wary of spending it.

The same deal comes with "saving" various things, buildings, equipment, etc. It takes a lot of cash and rail groups are rarely blessed with that. The Virginian station in Roanoke comes to mind. A very worthy project in my opinion, but the Roanoke chapter could not have done it (even only half way at this point) without major funding from grants and other such assistance. While the Chapter had decent finances from years of operations, this station project will end up costing in excess of two million dollars. In my many years of dealing with these things, I've not once heard of a group with that kind of cash on hand. This is just not that kind of hobby or interest.

It is also an interest that seems to rarely attract wealthy people who can underwrite a lot of projects. 

As I said, a very simply factor in the railfan/modeler/rail historian area is money. To put it bluntly, those folks are cheap when it comes to sharing money for larger projects. Yeah, we'll buy insanely priced memorabilia, expensive vehicles, cameras, brass models, etc. but make a substantial donation to a worthy major project? Almost unheard of. Railfan's don't want to spend a bunch of money to see 611 run again, they only want to go out and chase, take pictures, not ride, or buy tickets. Sure, you can bet they would be climbing all over each other to shoot pictures and chase, but to take part in ownership of something as intangible? I sort of doubt it.

Selling 260 calendars is a fairly small market, that effort and money could be expended on something to serve a wider market easily. 1,000 calendars, now that has some justification in my mind.

Ken Miller


On Oct 14, 2013, at 11:53 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:


> I get the high cost of color printing. Yet the prospect of offering great color imagery is valuable to historians and just looks nice IMHO.

> 

> Andre Jackson

> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad

> 

> 

> Message: 1

> Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 08:02:35 -0400

> From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>

> Subject: RE: NWHS 2014 Classic Calendar

> To: "'NW Mailing List'" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>

> Message-ID: <013401cec80c$1b417340$51c459c0$@comcast.net>

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

> 

> NWHS quit producing color calendars after the 2013 calendar because future sales were projected to not cover the cost of production. Decreasing sales over the years resulted in lowering the quantity of calendars produced. The fixed costs of calendar production required an increase in calendar retail costs which contributed to lower sales. We sold 565 color calendars for the 2010 calendar, 494 for the 2011 color calendar, and 440 for the 2012 color calendar. We decreased the number of calendars produced from 750 for 2012 to 500 for 2013. The higher unit cost per calendar because of lower production quantities required an approximate $2 increase in calendar retail cost. The result was we sold a little over 270 of the 2013 color calendar. The breakeven point for the 2013 color calendar was 260 calendars.

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> After a cost analysis the Board of Directors voted to discontinue producing a color calendar because of the high cost of production and continued decreasing sales quantity. We have continued producing the black and white calendars because the lower production costs associated with no color printing allow us to sell the black and white calendar at a lower retail cost. 

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> While many organizations publish calendars in the autumn, we publish our calendars in the April ? May time period in order to have them available for our NWHS summer convention. NWHS members are currently working on the 2015 black/white calendar and it will be available for our June convention in Roanoke.

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> 

> Alex Schust 

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