Making mini desk calendars again for 2024 is exciting for us here at Idea Chic!
Looking ahead at dates and time, 2024 is a leap year, it is impossible to not also reflect on past calendars. Looking back over the last few years, many small businesses had to make tough decisions during and since the pandemic in regards to a product or the whole business. We understand this first hand and directly related to our calendars production.
- At the beginning of the pandemic, none of us knew what to expect and hardly had time to sit back to see what would happen.
- Suddenly eCommerce explodes as it is clear brick-and-mortar would remain restricted at best. Especially small business.
- Carriers could not keep up with demand which was reserved for the Christmas holiday mailings before - suddenly it is a challenge all year long.
- When small business retailers started opening again, there was a push to support your local shop. People responded and it was beautiful to see!
- Then supply chain issues became a widely understood problem. We felt this for our products and materials.
Decisions to end production temporarily of calendars was forces as we look back now. For a seasonal product that requires the same paper as our greeting cards, suddenly we had to decide how to use existing stock of materials in case we could not get stock on schedule. Now we want to explain to customers who buy these in multiple every year. The business case is hard to quickly describe - so we just said we can't make this year, for two years it turned out.
We had messages about the calendars not being available and it was overwhelming.
Idea Chic launched these two mini desk calendars for 2024 and emailed these loyal customers. They came back with glee! We heard from some that their friends will be thrilled to see these gifts for their desks in 2024. This warms our hearts. We can describe the gratitude for these people sticking with a small business like ours during challenging times!
