Mitch said:
Thanks for the comments. I to like the hard copy. But for those of you that put on a production sale the cost of catalogs and postage is getting rather high. Last year we printed and sent out about 3500 catalogs at a cost of $9075.00. Also we have about 500-600 catalogs that didn't get to were they were sent and never came back, so who ate them!! I know it only takes a couple of buyers who got the catalog and ended up buying to pay for the postage and catalogs. I guess it is just part of doing business, a large part cost wise.
I was just looking for alternatives to keep the cost down. Still appreciate any more suggestions or comments.
Anyone who has never had their own production sale or has been involved in the management of a sale they have consigned to, really has no idea how much work and expense is involved, IMO. The decisions are sometimes very tough ones but you have to design a budget and stick as close as possible to it, or your sale expenses can get crazy. Figuring out how many sale catalogs you are going to send out, where your advertising will be placed, who will be involved in your sale as sales reps and management are all important considerations. Many people think they should be on your mailing list even if they have spoken to you or purchased a few straws of semen at sometime. I had a guy phone me a week before our bull sale this spring, asking why I had taken him off our mailing list. He purchased 5 straws of semen from me last year, so I assume that is why he thought I would have placed him on our mailing list. I mailed him a sale catalog by priority mail ( at a cost of $16.00) and then contacted him prior to the sale. He told me he wasn't interested in a bull, but liked to have the sale catalog to look through. If I had known that, I could have sent it to him by regular mail and saved myself close to $15.00!
I look at my sale catalogs as being good promotion, so I like to send quite a bunch out. Normally, I can send 750 - 800 sale catalogs out for the same price as a 1 page full color ad in a breed magazine. ( I do not believe this is a replacement for advertising in a breed magazine, but is supplemental to it) I still have to draw a line someplace in who will be included in my catalog mailing. I could easily send out 10,000- 12,000 catalogs or more, if I send one to every person who has purchased in the past 2 years within the breed. For bull sales, it is your commercial bull buyers that are the most important and I always print lots of extra copies of the sale catalog so that it allows them to be placed in sale barns, feed and supply stores, and anywhere else potential buyers may see them. Most printers only charge a very minimal amount to overrun a sale catalog, and sometimes it really isn't much over the paper cost.
I have had 23 production sales over the years and have also consigned cattle to countless other sales. For at least 25 years, I have tried to keep sale expenses at 15% or less and I have only managed to accomplish this twice in this time. Both times this only happened because the sale grossed considerably more than what I had expected it to do.( There have been several sales that have ended up with sale costs being between 15 -16 % and some others that ended up at 18-20 %) This simply means that you need to get more for your cattle in a production sale than what you would get if you could sell them all by private treaty as there are so many built in costs. I would also add that if you have your own sale or consign to a sale, the only number that reallly is meaningful is the total dollars the sale generated for you. I have seen people almost drive themselves crazy trying to figure out why one of their animals did not bring as much as they expected and other animals brought more than expected. I always do a rough calculation of the money I would like to get from a sale. When the sale is over, if I have reached this amount or passed it, I am pleased with the sale, regardless what each animal sold for. A few years ago, we had a bad ice storm the morning of our sale, and our sale day crowd was smaller than normal,. When the sale was over we had 8 head that had not sold, but I had surpassed what I was hoping to get from the cattle in the sale by $8800. I was very pleased with the sale, despite several people who were feeling bad that we had not got them all sold.
)) Its hard to put checks and crosses next to selected lots on a on line catalog. On line is good to look at while waiting for the "real thing" but IMO hard copy for sale day and later reference is the winner.
