Sometimes nude isn’t enough
Imagine seven middle-aged women posing nude for a calendar and losing money! That’s what happened to a group of mothers in Spain who wanted to raise money for their kids’ school. They’d heard that a similar group of women in Britain had made more than a million pounds with a discreet nude calendar back in 2000. Their story was then made into a movie called “Calendar Girls”. They figured they couldn’t lose.
They all used different objects to hide their private parts but they were mostly nude. One posed with Christmas tinsel, one carried a shotgun and wore a fox pelt and one woman laid on a picnic table and covered herself with a red umbrella. Sounds good to me. I’m thinking heaps of men would buy it.
Men didn’t buy it, nor did women. They have 5,000 unsold copies and the women are in debt for $16,000.
How did it go so wrong?
The women are amateurs in the world of photography and publishing and nobody thought to check to see when the calendar needed to be produced in order to hit the holiday trade. Now, not only don’t they have money to improve their one classroom for all elementary students in the village, they also have no space to store the unsold calendars.
Now that the news media has picked up on the complaint by the printer that the women were behind in their payments for the calendar printing, maybe someone will buy the calendars and sell them on the net. I’d buy one just for the school fundraiser.
true. they should have consulted a professional photographer and business manager for their project. count me in. i’ll buy one too for the sake of the fundraiser.
Funny story. Happy to have you on my EntreCard widget today!
Roxiticus Desperate Housewives
This is sad…. I can only imagine how the women feel. Here they are trying to do a good thing and it just blows up in there face. Great post!
Great Story and a good lesson in business basics! Timing is very important. If you find out where to buy one of these, I’d buy one to support their classroom as well! Thanks for sharing such good stories.
I imagine the loss of money is a bad feeling, but multiple levels of embarrassment have to be woven in there too. Sad story.
I’d buy one just for the mom with the shotgun. They should’ve played more on that theme. Mom with switchblade, mom with numchucks, etc.
so sad.