What needs to change in the promotional calendar industry

Our own website gave off that impression not so long ago.

But the aesthetic side is only part of it. The bigger issue is what is missing underneath. At the time of writing, it is still uncommon among specialist promotional calendar manufacturers to find all of the following:

• pricing calculators that actually work
• quote builders beyond basic HTML forms
• order tracking through production, not just a courier link at the end
• clear explanations of process and policy, not just artwork guidelines
• end-to-end ordering guidance for people who are not already familiar with the industry
• clear and consistent information about the people, manufacturing location and provenance behind each product
• a functional and trustworthy product-level review system

The above is only a small sample of course. What is missing are systems that actually pass agency to the customer, rather than leaving it with the supplier. What I mean here is that customers shouldn’t have to wait for their supplier to know things or do things.

Why this needs fixing

A common mistake in small industries like ours is to look only at direct competitors. This is flawed and creates the conditions for stagnation. The comparison basis has to be wider, from the customer’s perspective, not the supplier’s.

When they (the customers) land on our site, for example, do they compare us to another supplier in the sector? Maybe. What’s more realistic, though, is that they compare our site and our processes to what they are used to everywhere else in their lives: their banking app, their e-commerce platforms (Amazon, eBay, and so on), and that website they used a year ago to buy their sister a personalised novelty mug. That’s the comparison basis.

Companies in this area must stop looking over the fence and trying to one-up the guy next door. Instead, as an industry, we have to zoom out much, much further.

To make the point concrete: these things are already standard in other areas of commercial print and especially retail print. Look at Photobox, Printed.com, HelloPrint, StressFreePrint, Vistaprint and so many others. The point is not necessarily these specific companies, but the business models and SaaS-style approach behind them.

Not all of them are fully in this sector yet, but the direction of travel is clear. If they move further into this market, our offer to customers has to be strong enough to compete. Not to put too fine a point on it: right now, we are underprepared. The incumbents in the promotional calendar industry are vulnerable if they do not adapt.

Issue 2. Opaque pricing and ordering processes

If you were left shaking your head in disagreement at my last issue, then this one may resonate more.

The "traditional" process

I encourage you to go online and try to get a price for, say, 125 desk calendars with an advert strip printed in three standard colours. Across many specialist suppliers, the process still looks something like this:

1. You searched "promotional desk calendar" on Google.
2. You found a supplier.
3. You found a unit price "range" or "guide", say £3.50 - £9.60 for argument’s sake.
4. You looked around for the specific price that matched your quantity and requirements.
5. You tried to see how changes to your order affected the price: delivery, VAT, product configurations, etc.
6. You didn’t find it.
7. You started swearing.
8. You thought to yourself "there must be a better way" (there is).
9. You then clicked the big, famous "enquire now" button and filled in a web form.
10. You waited for a sales representative to review the specifications and return with a confirmed quote.
11. Only then might that rep have looked at their price sheets and, using the specifications you provided, given you a quote.

Take a step back. Ask yourself:

• Does this look like a good system?
• Does this look like a transparent system?
• Does this give the supplier control or the customer?

The problem is that customers still have to work harder than necessary to order from many specialist suppliers. Some businesses already show that there is a better way.

Why it ended up like this

Now, if you had a suspicious lens, I wouldn’t blame you for spotting that a process like the above could help suppliers:

• intentionally make quote comparisons hard,
• hide extra fees in quotes,
• price the customer, not the product,
• quietly increase prices without a clear rationale.

Even though this is the lens that’s easy to grab, it often isn’t the right one. Now I’ve seen the internals, the answer is simpler and much less satisfying: complexity.

If a company has poor systems, weak processes, and limited digitalisation (see Issue 1 above) what happens in an industry where everything is complex? Quantity-based pricing, artwork handling, variation-based pricing, bundled orders, international delivery, and so on. Everything becomes manual.

The reason it is the way it is isn’t because companies have malice or are bad actors. Many work exceptionally hard to make things clear. That said, having one clean, easy pathway to give customers in this sector is just hard.

Why this needs fixing

It matters for the same reason weak digitalisation matters: customers are people, and people do not like working hard to give away their money. If the industry makes it difficult to order promotional calendars, customers will increasingly look elsewhere.

The comparison basis is also widening (as we spoke about during Issue 1). Customers will not just compare promotional calendars with other promotional calendars. They will compare them with other promotional products, and with other buying experiences altogether. If those options have better systems, customers will move.

And, from what we’ve seen, some may not come back if they leave the sector entirely.

Issue 3. Lack of clarity about where promotional calendars fit in the modern world

Now for the really uncomfortable one that has been looming for a while: technology has come a long way since the printing press. How do we, as a sector, continue to sell ink on paper with a bit of wire?

Some questions should come to mind, whether you have good answers for them or not:

• Are promotional calendars even worth it anymore?
• Why should companies allocate money to promotional calendars when that same money could scale further through online marketing?
• How do promotional calendars work alongside other modern marketing strategies, and do they even work alongside them?

I touch on some of these questions in this article, but you can be sure they are already being asked in boardrooms. When the year comes round, and someone in the room raises their hand, the question might be: "Is this a massive waste of money that we could allocate elsewhere?"

The industry has to stop pretending that question is unfair or insulting. It is just practical to ask.

Our job, as you might guess, is to answer it. But without insulting the buyer’s intelligence or feeding them rubbish.

How to address it

The worst response to this uncertainty is silence. If the industry keeps ducking the hard questions, someone else will answer them for us (probably not in our favour).

So yes, I do think promotional calendars still offer real value. But we have to be clear about where and why.

Until such a time that we feel promotional calendars offer no value, we should focus on:

• Constantly discussing how promotional calendars interact with other marketing choices, such as Google Ads, social media ads, and other promotional products.
• Being honest about their limitations. It isn’t enough to slap "all year round advertising" somewhere and call it a day. Customers have tools now. They know more and they can smell weak arguments. We have to respect that.
• Emphasising where they are still strong, such as high-value orders, repeated exposure, and long-term physical presence.

There is no guarantee the answers to the tough questions will be the ones we want forever. But while they are favourable, we have to tackle them.

What we are doing about these issues

We essentially ripped up our previous website and built a new one around tackling these three issues, amongst others, to be fair. We now treat the site as a core part of how customers understand, price, and manage their orders (you’re on the new site now).

That has meant:

• improving the overall design, but more importantly treating the website as a serious part of the buying process (Issue 1)
• building Track My Order, so customers can follow their order through the factory rather than only getting a courier link at the end. This came with major changes to the factory operation (Issue 1 & 2)
• building the Trade Portal and the A-Z directory of independent calendar agents to help keep agents visible, supported and properly equipped (Issue 1)
• creating a blog that discusses industry challenges, including this one, and shares real factory stories to show who we are and where the work is done (Issue 1 & 3)
• registering with Made in Britain to make our UK manufacturing position clearer (Issue 1)
• letting customers build quotes online, with dynamic and transparent pricing, instead of forcing every enquiry through a phone call, email or basic web form (Issue 1 & 2)
• writing clearer policies and a proper support centre for customers who are new to the industry (Issue 1 & 3)
• building product lines for modern audiences, such as our Emoji calendars (Issue 3)
• creating an internal white paper for future changes, so this does not stop at one website rebuild

None of this means the work is done. It just means we are treating digital seriously this time round, not as decoration.

Final thoughts

It’s difficult to know the right thing to do, but we’re tackling at least some of the gaps we think need filling rather than sitting still. You’ll be able to watch the journey with us and see whether we’re right or wrong.