Blakeslee is helped by her husband, whom she married the year before she started ArtCalendar. Drew Steis, 52, spent years with United Press International as a reporter and, eventually, bureau chief, and worked around Capitol Hill at the National Endowment for the Arts and as a ghostwriter for various politicians. He also had helped start another home-based newsletter, now 11 years old, with his first wife. Steis writes at least a feature a month for ArtCalendar, edits some, and helps with the phone work and choosing the graphics. His steady source of income is his position as director of advertising and promotions for a producer of antiques shows, for which he works both at an office and from his home.
Blakeslee, like every other person who starts a business, had images at the outset of making more money more quickly more easily than was realistic. Although cash has never been a problem -- after eating about $6,500 from savings to get started the first year, the publication has been self-funding -- it also hasn't been plentiful enough to support the family. Still, ArtCalendar has met one major goal: it's a business of deliberate flexibility. Blakeslee has been able to play the business by ear, have fun with it, and make it function with nominal planning or self-imposed bureaucracy. Those characteristics have had real value to her.
Although Blakeslee never thought of the journal as a cute little "income substitution" arts-and-crafts project, she also didn't think it would become as prominent as it has. Not surprisingly, success has enlarged her view of the journal's potential. After five years of changing little about the way ArtCalendar looks, Blakeslee is toying with redesigning it, adding color, and seeking advertisers to support more editorial content. One reason for her impulse is boredom; another is her near embarrassment about the publication's "humble" look, particularly given that its readers are visual artists.
She also wants to try to take circulation up to 20,000. But there are serious questions about growth like that. Exactly why should she expand her audience? What would be the benefits and the costs of inflating a business that has so well served her personal interests in its past?
* * *
I don't know; the business has doubled every year, so I think, Why not continue?" says Blakeslee over a bowl of cucumber soup in her dining room. The wall next to the table is decorated with oil paintings she made when she had time, seven years ago -- five two-foot-tall close-ups of roses, each a different color. "It's kind of a game, a challenge to continue that."
But despite her drive, decisions about whether to expand, and in what ways, are not easy. For one thing, the business is already getting harder. New demands have resulted from volume alone -- demands as mundane as opening the increasing amount of mail to more important tasks such as handling phone calls and making sure all the readers receive their issues. There's already a reasonable degree of confusion.
Those are purely the challenges of maintenance. In fact, even without pushing for growth, Blakeslee faces headaches that need remedies. One is her use of second-class postal service, which is becoming slower and slower, and is causing delays for many of her subscribers. She is considering a switch to first-class-only delivery, but she's uncertain whether subscribers would pay for it. Less than 30% of her readers now ante up the additional $10 for first-class service, electing ArtCalendar's $29 rate over its $39 rate. She could lose subscribers by raising the price.
New steps in new directions will only intensify the challenges ArtCalendar faces. Take a potential redesign, for instance. Blakeslee has no reason to think that current subscribers care whether or not she invests the time, energy, and bucks to transform ArtCalendar from its newsletter look into something more magazine-like; they may even balk at a less information-intensive format. So why consider it? Pride, in part. "I have a perfectionist streak, and I can see what the magazine ultimately could be," she says. "Part of me thinks, Don't fool with it if it's working, and part of me can't resist." For now, the redesign is on hold.
Blakeslee's pride might also push her to grow circulation, but growth will be harder at this point. It's harder to find lists of people she hasn't approached before, and harder to decide if using general-interest lists -- which may yield a 1.5% rather than 3% positive response -- are worthwhile.
Then why grow? For three reasons, at least: (1) to reach an annual income higher than the $30,000 she now informally draws; (2) to lock in her position in the face of new competition; and (3) to build a more profitable property in case she wants to sell it.
The publication doesn't yet generate the kind of money Blakeslee wants to earn; she draws a start-up-like wage of $2,500 each month from the company checking account. For tax purposes, she thinks the business will show only a $22,000 pretax (and presalary) profit on projected 1991 sales of $178,000. That's somewhat misleading, though; there's a lot more cash sitting around the business. Subscribers, remember, pay not only for the current issue but for those over the next year as well, and Blakeslee expects to take in another $135,000 in cash during 1991, which will be "deferred" to cover costs on issues for 1992. Until then, it will be sitting in her bank account. The business also is reaching the point where Blakeslee expects profits to grow much faster than expenses, and if next year's sales double, from $178,000 to $355,000 (with the number of subscribers topping 10,000), Blakeslee thinks profits will quadruple, from $22,000 to $90,000.
