10-19-2021, 04:53 AM
Picture it: CBs of the world! What I'm proposing is a little project I've been researching for a while now, which I think would be a fun and valuable distraction on the forum. Other bike-specific forums do this and it's pretty successful elsewhere.
The Goal: To create a nice, attractive, artistically coherent calendar featuring the venerable Honda CB1100 in all its incarnations. To be able to produce this calendar at a meager enough cost that anybody can easily afford to own one. To do so at a net zero profit, because this is not an exercise in monetizing our love of the bike, it's an exercise in celebrating the spirit of the machine and its owners in a way we can all share. The goal is to make the calendar and spend every cent collected on the calendar's production.
The product: Using an online print shop, I've come up with a reliable design aesthetic that I can easily adapt to any photo arrangement. This way, I can create a personalized product for the forum with minimal cost. The calendar will be composed of photos provided by YOU, the users! YOUR bikes will be featured in the calendar itself, hanging in your fellow forum members homes for a whole month, proudly expressing what YOU love about your bike. See a quick and dirty example below using some of Alpriders photos:
![[Image: 6ddc1c345a054b0418931ec70dd10d59.jpg]](https://cb1100forum.net/forum/uploads/imp/202110/6ddc1c345a054b0418931ec70dd10d59.jpg)
Obviously, I want to do something much more exciting with the cover art, and I'm hoping for some much more dynamic photos, but this gives you an idea of the composition of the calendar as I now envision it.A series of 1, 2 or 3 photos, a personal quote or forum signature from the owner of the bike, and of course the date grid. Also, Just for fun, I had the idea to include the birthdays of the users whose bikes are featured, as a little reward for taking such great pictures that you get selected for the calendar.
The Cost: After some extensive research on print shops, shipping arrangements, and other associated costs, I've come to the conclusion that we can distribute these calendars for about $14.00 apiece including shipping (tentatively). A number of things factor into this. The cost of the calendars themselves actually vary with the number of calendars that are ordered. For example, if 25 or more are ordered, I can hold firm to the $14.00 price point. If only 10 are ordered, the cost increases to over $20.00 per calendar. If fewer than 10 are ordered, we literally can't even get them made. Shipping is another ball of wax. If we were only shipping in the domestic US, the cost would actually be a bit less, but considering that we can have participants and orders from all around the world out of our user base, covering shipping to those areas is a little harder, which is currently factored into the $14.00 price point. This is one of the reasons I'm making this post now, to gauge interest with the group and see just how likely it is that we'd have enough orders to make this reasonably priced for everybody.
The Time Table: Ideally, this would be a calendar everybody could hang up for the year 2022. If there's real interest in this project idea, We can start collecting order pledges and begin collecting photo submissions within the next week. I would want to ensure a cutoff date with all final selections made and design submitted to the print shop for production by no later than 11/14/21. Once the final design proof is submitted and available for everybody to see, That's when we'd start collecting final purchases. If, for whatever reason, this can't work, I'll push the whole thing back to a 22/23 calendar from July to June. Why does the year have to be bookended with gloomy winter months anyway?
Logistical notes: Australians, Europeans, and other international forum users are not excluded from this venture! I really want this calendar to showcase all the variation and awesomeness of the CB1100, and you can't do that without your cool international colorways, special trims, and model years. Australians will be the hardest to service with shipping though, So I may ask for help from some kind Aussie on the forum to handle distribution down there, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Please let me know what you think, if you have an opinion at all. Ask questions, make suggestions, call me a nerd, otherwise the ensuing apathy will tell me all I need to know
The Goal: To create a nice, attractive, artistically coherent calendar featuring the venerable Honda CB1100 in all its incarnations. To be able to produce this calendar at a meager enough cost that anybody can easily afford to own one. To do so at a net zero profit, because this is not an exercise in monetizing our love of the bike, it's an exercise in celebrating the spirit of the machine and its owners in a way we can all share. The goal is to make the calendar and spend every cent collected on the calendar's production.
The product: Using an online print shop, I've come up with a reliable design aesthetic that I can easily adapt to any photo arrangement. This way, I can create a personalized product for the forum with minimal cost. The calendar will be composed of photos provided by YOU, the users! YOUR bikes will be featured in the calendar itself, hanging in your fellow forum members homes for a whole month, proudly expressing what YOU love about your bike. See a quick and dirty example below using some of Alpriders photos:
Obviously, I want to do something much more exciting with the cover art, and I'm hoping for some much more dynamic photos, but this gives you an idea of the composition of the calendar as I now envision it.A series of 1, 2 or 3 photos, a personal quote or forum signature from the owner of the bike, and of course the date grid. Also, Just for fun, I had the idea to include the birthdays of the users whose bikes are featured, as a little reward for taking such great pictures that you get selected for the calendar.
The Cost: After some extensive research on print shops, shipping arrangements, and other associated costs, I've come to the conclusion that we can distribute these calendars for about $14.00 apiece including shipping (tentatively). A number of things factor into this. The cost of the calendars themselves actually vary with the number of calendars that are ordered. For example, if 25 or more are ordered, I can hold firm to the $14.00 price point. If only 10 are ordered, the cost increases to over $20.00 per calendar. If fewer than 10 are ordered, we literally can't even get them made. Shipping is another ball of wax. If we were only shipping in the domestic US, the cost would actually be a bit less, but considering that we can have participants and orders from all around the world out of our user base, covering shipping to those areas is a little harder, which is currently factored into the $14.00 price point. This is one of the reasons I'm making this post now, to gauge interest with the group and see just how likely it is that we'd have enough orders to make this reasonably priced for everybody.
The Time Table: Ideally, this would be a calendar everybody could hang up for the year 2022. If there's real interest in this project idea, We can start collecting order pledges and begin collecting photo submissions within the next week. I would want to ensure a cutoff date with all final selections made and design submitted to the print shop for production by no later than 11/14/21. Once the final design proof is submitted and available for everybody to see, That's when we'd start collecting final purchases. If, for whatever reason, this can't work, I'll push the whole thing back to a 22/23 calendar from July to June. Why does the year have to be bookended with gloomy winter months anyway?
Logistical notes: Australians, Europeans, and other international forum users are not excluded from this venture! I really want this calendar to showcase all the variation and awesomeness of the CB1100, and you can't do that without your cool international colorways, special trims, and model years. Australians will be the hardest to service with shipping though, So I may ask for help from some kind Aussie on the forum to handle distribution down there, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Please let me know what you think, if you have an opinion at all. Ask questions, make suggestions, call me a nerd, otherwise the ensuing apathy will tell me all I need to know
