So Many Calendars, So Little Time
If you’ve been looking for a 2003 calendar, perhaps you already suspected this: There are more calendar themes than years on the AD calendar.
Publishers produced about 3,000 calendar varieties this year, offering everything from an ode to outhouses to a celebration of witchcraft featuring all the major Wiccan holidays.
The proliferation of choices reflects the evolution of a $550-million retail industry that didn’t amount to much until a whimsical family business called BrownTrout Publishers Inc. began making specialty calendars on a lark in 1986.
Since selling about 30,000 calendars that first year, BrownTrout has grown into a big fish in the industry.
The San Mateo, Calif., company says it has sold 12 million calendars this year, enabling it to stake a claim as the nation’s largest publisher of calendars sold by retailers.
“They have really taken things to another level,” said Hillel Levin, general manager of Calendars.com, a major online merchant partially owned by book store giant Barnes & Noble Inc.
“They’ve become a powerhouse because they really excel at finding niches that people have a passionate interest in,” Levin said.
BrownTrout’s 2003 calendars have accounted for more than $100 million in retail sales. As a wholesaler, BrownTrout makes much less than that. The privately held company says its annual revenue is about $35 million.
There are other calendar heavyweights, including Andrews McMeel and Workman Publishing Co., but none can match BrownTrout’s depth of selections.
Including titles released under other labels, BrownTrout this year produced more than 900 calendar themes, up from about 500 varieties just five years ago.
It took a 283-page catalog to list all the company’s 2003 calendars. In 1986, the company put out a one-page flier to promote a modest selection of three calendars devoted to Florida, Idaho and Salt Lake City.
“If it’s a noun, there is a good chance that we have a calendar devoted to it,” said Wendover H. Brown, who runs BrownTrout with her husband, Marc, and his twin brother, Mike.
Most of BrownTrout’s calendar themes are prosaic. Animal-themed calendars account for about 40% of the company’s sales, which explains why there are 240 dog calendars in BrownTrout’s 2003 catalog.
With online sales making it easier to connect with niche audiences, BrownTrout has been branching into ever more eclectic themes, including its popular outhouse tribute that offers meditative thoughts such as, “When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”
As quirky as it is, the outhouse calendar may not be the oddest ever produced by BrownTrout.
The company’s other esoteric efforts include calendars devoted to jackasses, lawn mowers and erotica in Renaissance art. BrownTrout even found enough material to fill a 2003 calendar called “Wild and Scenic New Jersey.”
Retailers have responded to the rising calendar demand by opening more temporary stores devoted to the products.
The 9-year-old Calendar Club this year operated more than 1,000 stores, mostly in malls, from October through December. About 40% of calendars are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The breadth of calendars in today’s market even surprises the Browns, self-described “children of the ‘60s” just looking for something that would help pay the bills when they decided to try making wilderness calendars in the 1980s.
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Bestselling ways to pass the time
Top-selling 2003 calendars, as of Wednesday:
1. George W. Bush Daily Boxed Calendar
2. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Wall Calendar
3. German Shorthaired Pointers Wall Calendar
4. Harry Potter Movie Wall Calendar
5. The Far Side Wall Calendar
6. 365 Cats Daily Boxed Calendar
7. Thomas Kinkade -- Painter of Light Wall Calendar
8. Lord of the Rings -- The Two Towers Wall Calendar
9. Dilbert Daily Boxed Calendar
10. FDNY Firefighters Wall Calendar
Source: Calendars.com
