Calling the Reader Helpline: How Can I Get My Business Off the Ground?

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My wife and I have a small business… well, sort of. It’s called Kate’s Calendars.

Back story on our product
Before Kate and I married and while I was on my mission in Tijuana, Kate would make homemade advent calendars and send them to me. I really looked forward to them because it was fun to see the different personalized messages she put behind each door. Because communication is limited on a mission, opening the advent calendar doors was like getting a letter or message everyday from Kate. My fellow missionaries were often jealous that I had a girl back home who would take the time to do this for me.

Fast forward two years. Kate and I get married. My wife shared with me that one of her dreams was to turn her calendar creating into a business. I loved the calendars while I was on my mission and most of the other missionaries said they would have loved to receive something like it, so I felt there was a definite market among LDS missionaries. We had a sizable amount of money from our wedding, so we decided to bite the bullet and start the business.

We designed a personalizable calendar and found a company that could produce them for us. We decided to market them to Mormon families who had children on missions. So, we put a picture of the LDS Salt Lake Temple. We had 1000 made at a cost of about $2,000.

My wife started a website and created an online store. Everything was in place. We just need to promote the things. There’s an email service for missionary families called Dear Elder that has a huge LDS customer base. They send out monthly e-mails to its users and include ads from other companies. We decided buy some pixel space, but it set us back about $450 for a small square. That e-mail brought in some business, but not too much. We haven’t used Dear Elder since because the cost is too much for us.

We started to send out samples to LDS bookstores. A few showed some interest and order some, but again it wasn’t that many.

We tried Adwords to direct traffic to our site. While we did get more traffic, no one bought anything.

Now that I’m in law school and money is tight, we haven’t renewed my wife’s website. I made a free blogger page with the same info, but of course the site isn’t that slick looking.

What we need help with
It’s been two years and we still have boxes of these calendars sitting in a closet. We really just want to break even, so if we can sell 5oo at $5.50 a piece, we’ll be alright. We’ve recognized our biggest mistake with this business venture is that we made our niche too small. There are only so many families who have children serving LDS missions. If we had put some other image on the calendar (like a picture of trees or just made it personalizable Christmas calendar) we probably wouldn’t have this problem. Here are some questions that perhaps my readers can answer.

1. Is a personalizable advent calendar even a good idea? It seems like most people we’ve talked to don’t get too excited about it.
2. How can we promote this calendar with little or no money?
3. Should we just bite the bullet and invest in a better website for the product?
4. Any advice in general to get the ball rolling on this?

Again, we just want to break even with this. If we can do better than that, great. We really want to expand our customer base. We have hopes of making a personalizable advent calendar for Christmas and maybe one geared for families who have troops in Iraq. But in order to do that, we need to sell these Mormon ones we have.

My wife and I appreciate any help you all can give. Thanks!

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6 Comments

1. Kenlie on 11.05.2007 at 14:03 (Reply)

   What a cute idea! I L-O-V-E it! I wish your market could expand…It is a great idea though…Have you ever considered selling on etsy.com? They seem to get a decent amount of traffic. It costs about 25 cents to list then your pay a percentage…I wish I had better advice because they’re very cute.

2. Mike on 11.05.2007 at 14:29 (Reply)

   I also think etsy could be a good idea.

   Also- even though you already have a website have you considered doing an ebay store? My sister Jen’s friend was briefly on an episode of Oprah about moms who run a business from home. (she originally met Oprah when she went with Jen to a taping)

   She sold on ebay (expensive but cute) children’s clothing she made and quickly developed a loyal following. Eventually she started a brand made up of her and some other people who had been selling either clothing or jewelry on ebay. There seems to be an ebay shopping community, along with communities of coalitions of sellers that put their resources together in order to more effectively use ebay’s promotion tools.

   If you think you might want to do that email me explaining the business and I’ll forward it to my sister so she can see if her friend is interested in giving you some advice.

3. Andrew Flusche on 12.05.2007 at 11:38 (Reply)

   Hi Brett,

   Your calendars look awesome! You and Kate definitely have something really neat and original here.

   My only thought is to continue trying to diversify your niche a bit. I’m Catholic and pretty ignorant about other religions. But I’d think you are right that LDS families with children on missions is a fairly small group.

   Maybe you could just call them “personalized count-down calendars.” Then you could pitch them (through blog posts) for different things: advent, wedding, baptism, etc.

   You could also use them for simply “25 days of gratitude” for a spouse, child, or parent. Maybe a nice anniversary present as well.

   Have you thought about pitching them to individual LDS churches? (or are they called temples?, sorry) Perhaps a church would consider buying some to give to members to mark an upcoming important religious ceremony or date.

   Sorry I don’t have anything better. I definitely hope you keep us informed how this goes.

   Take care,
   Andrew

4. The Frugal Law Student on 12.05.2007 at 12:25 (Reply)

   Keline- etsy looks like another place we could list our calendars. Thanks for the tip and the compliments!

   Mike- We’ve looked into starting an E-bay store, but it costs about $16 month to keep one up. I guess the ebays promotion tools and community might make the extra expense worth it. Again, I’m not sure there’s a real big LDS presence on ebay. We might give it a try and see what happens.

   Andrew- Great ideas on changing how we pitch it. I think personalized countdown calendar will probably catch more people’s attention than advent calendar. Advent calendars are associated with Christmas, so I’m sure people are having a hard time understanding that these calendars aren’t just for Christmas, but any time. I also like the 25 days of gratitude idea. Maybe for the missionary it could be “25 days of encouragement.”

   Update:
   Some site that reviews LDS books and products has agreed to review Kate’s Calendars. We sent her calendar yesterday. Hopefully, that will give us more exposure.

   We spent $10 on 5,000 Facebook fliers directed to people in the BYU network. While we have gotten some traffic, no one has bought anything. My wife and I are discussing going out to Provo for weekend this summer and try to hawk them door to door. It’s desperate, but we really want to break even and expand this product.

   Another idea is hiring a small sells force in the Provo area. Maybe we could put a flier on Facebook offering a commission for every calendar sold. It would be a quick way for some stay at home Mormon mom or college student to make some side income. Do you think people would go for it?

   Thanks for all your great ideas!

5. Kenlie on 12.05.2007 at 14:22 (Reply)

   Another idea is hiring a small sells force in the Provo area. Maybe we could put a flier on Facebook offering a commission for every calendar sold. It would be a quick way for some stay at home Mormon mom or college student to make some side income. Do you think people would go for it?

   Excellent idea! It shouldn’t be hard to find someone, and commission based pay works for everyone.

   Also, I thought of this after my initial post, but have you considered posting something on craigslist? It’s free, and you can advertise to a specific market (i.e. crafts in Provo, Salt Lake, etc.). I know it might seem like a stretch, but when I got involved with posting on craigslist, I realized they received a lot more traffic/buyers that I thought.

6. How To Open An Online Store With WordPress In Less Than 30 Minutes | The Frugal Law Student on 15.07.2007 at 08:23

   […] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!A while back ago, I asked for reader help on what to do with my wife’s and I’s  side business, Kate’s Calendars. I got some great feedback from several of my readers. One of the things I […]

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