Kama Sutra Ch. 06

The room went silent as Mom paused.

When the Bartholomew executive spoke, he hesitantly said, "Ma'am this looks optimistic. We can do it, but I am not sure if we would be able to get that much for a calendar. We have never sold a calendar for more than fifty dollars wholesale, even in the Aurum range."

"It's the content, not the quality of the product alone," Mom responded, without being offensive. Then added, "your costs are going to be covered, and the risk is mine."

I was grinning, looking at the response of the audience. Mom had just convinced them to sell the calendar at ten times the price than originally planned. I waited for the next big bomb that would make jaws drop further.

"Another thing..... I loved the idea of video clips. Thank you, Megan, for convincing us of it. I want you to package the calendar in two formats. One, just the calendar, and the other would be a calendar along with video clips of the thirteen published positions. The customer will have a choice of ordering either, so far as it is within the two thousand calendars print run."

Everyone was nodding.

"I want to sell the second package at a thousand dollars," Mom announced.

Everyone in the room was squirming by the time Mom finished.

Well, it was her money, there was no possible retort except for a squeamish reply from the Bartholomew executive. "distribution..."

Mom confirmed, "I will pay you the twenty percent commission as per the earlier contract."

The fellow almost fell off his chair. He had never thought this much money would be ever possible in a calendar deal. I guess he still did not believe in the plan, except for the fact that his downside was already covered by the production cost Mom volunteered to pay upfront.

We spent some more time rounding up the edges on the contract, deciding the quality aspects of the calendars. Megan took charge of the video editing as well, at additional cost.

Mom seemed at home, doing the deal-making, taking care of the business end, which she was so well trained to do, with her many years of experience.

———

Spending money was the easy part, it's the vision that mattered, and I believe Mom had nailed it to perfection.

The calendar production process took three weeks, and every day we went through scores of layouts, proofs, and final copies. Simultaneously, we were watching countless hours of video that Megan's team had put together and then matched the final clips with the printed calendar leaf.

With extended exposure to large printed calendar leaves and long videos, we were continually on high levels of hormones, testosterone, and horniness. The fact that there was a large-scale impending risk that Mom was taking on the calendar's marketing and distribution had the adrenaline running as well.

It was like we were on a high all day long. The only Out for us was having sex each night. Alex's one night at our home had gotten me back in Mom's bed. I wonder how I would have coped without this release.

Mom and I had reconciled that calendar production was in effect an extension of her leniency with me and to our fornication. Each night inevitably, we enacted the sex positions that were in production or video of which we were going through. The Deja Vu of my lovemaking with Mom became our bond, and I felt our relationship strengthen.

And then the day came when we had the final product in our hands. Bartholomew had framed the thirteen posters and gifted us the set. The final products of the two variants were shown to us and I was super impressed with the outcome.

The moment of reckoning came when Bartholomew's executive told us, "I have some good news to add."

Both Mom and I looked towards him eagerly. Sam was grinning like a puppy with a bone. Incidentally, he knew what was coming.

"We have sold half of the calendars. We have advance orders for nine hundred units. I am confident before the end of the year we will be able to sell the entire print run."

"excellent," Mom responded, nonchalantly, as if she knew of it already.

"Great!" I said excitedly.

The Bartholomew executive added, "We highly recommend that we increase the print run."

"No, we won't." Mom stopped him in his track and told him, "I'd prefer we stick to our plan and the two thousand copies idea. Making it limited-edition is the only way for us to get the right yield."

She added, "what the combination of the orders?"

"Six hundred forty are with video, and the rest just calendars. We believe the ratio will hold for the rest as well," he replied, beaming.

If we were smiling earlier, now we were grinning.

Three months later, we would note that he was not wrong in his estimation.

A couple of days later was Diwali -- a major Indian festival of lights. We could not be happier.

The unspoken deal between Mom and me, during the production of the calendar, had got extended to it getting sold. So it seemed.

A couple of months later, around mid-January, we sat again with Bartholomew and Sam.

Grinning broader than earlier, the Bartholomew executive shared the numbers, which were now not as surprised anymore.

The sale of the calendars was designed in a manner that no one country received over a hundred units, all orders were prepaid and the calendars got sent directly to the buyer even though the sale was through the distributors. Each package was delivered in a specific style and not by FedEx.

To add to its credibility, each calendar was numbered and personally signed by Mom and me.

Mom's plan had paid off to the letter, superbly. She had managed to pull off a coup of sorts; nobody had sold a calendar for two hundred fifty dollars earlier, most certainly not at a thousand dollars. The exclusivity angle, withholding supply, changed the game, as did a very effective partnership with Bartholomew.

The final tally was shared by a Bartholomew partner, "Sara, we printed two thousand units, as per your order. As you know, a few extra units were printed for posterity and for swiping rejected pages, if any. The final count of calendars is two thousand and seven. As per your request, we put only two thousand to market. We have sold one thousand nine hundred and eighty units as of last week. The remaining twenty were sent as complimentary copies to distributors across various countries, to take bookings. That obviously worked. The excess seven units are going to be delivered to you today, as you asked."

Confirmation smiles all across.

"You would be pleased to note, eight hundred and ten of these orders were only-calendar variant." he paused for effect. "That means One thousand one hundred and seventy were sold in the variant that came along with video clips."

Our smiles broadened. Mom too smiled, confidently.

"reach?" Mom asked.

"As discussed, no distributor was given more than a hundred units to sell. We managed to sell the calendars in all twenty countries across the world. As requested, no unit has been sold in India, but we cannot guarantee if any reaches there by way of resale or gift or by any other means."

"scrapping?" Mom went ahead.

The Bartholomew partner was aware of the contractual obligations. He dished out a piece of paper and a letter, "this is the incineration certificate and our confirmation letter that all excess leaves, units have been legitimately destroyed."

He handed Mom another package with master copies of the video clips that were reproduced. He finished with, "After settling distribution commission and production charges as invoiced, we will be remitting the final amount to you before the end of business hours today. This here is the working." He handed another page for Mom to go through.

Mom was quick with numbers and knew the final amount at the bottom seemed to be in order.

We shook hands, greeted and thanked everyone around, and started back towards home.

I looked at the paper in the elevator, coming down from Bartholomew's office. Despite knowing the broad contours of the deal and the numbers the final impact of the tally was still overwhelming.

"hot damn!" I ended up saying.

The final number at the bottom said, $1,050,000.

This of course was after settling a distribution cost of twenty percent for Bartholomew as well as their production cost of forty-eight thousand dollars.

Mom was not jumping with joy, at least not from outside, though she smiled aplenty. I, on the other hand, could not contain my excitement. On the way back, I asked Mom to drive.

True to their words, later in the evening, money had been transferred to Mom's account by Bartholomew.

Mom had already paid Megan, video production costs, studio, and all other overheads long back. Sam had been given an advance, and his account needed to be settled for a final few thousand dollars.

We pocketed a cool million dollars, well, almost a million.

"Mom, we need to go to Vegas to celebrate this," I exclaimed.

Mom smiled back. "I was thinking we should do a cruise. A Caribbean cruise, or maybe the Mediterranean if you are up for it?"

"hell, yeah!" I exclaimed.

Mom laughed. And then we embraced and kissed.

As luck would have it, I bagged the role in the television series I had earlier auditioned for. We ended up postponing our trip twice, before finally going on our cruise trip in summer, five months later.

Mom, in the meanwhile, shelved her idea of adding another store and she decided to managing and grooming the one she already had. It was coming along beautifully. The store now had regular loyal customers, a lot of whom came to chat with Mom along with buying their books.

Having got postponed a couple of times, we compensated it by planning for Europe, and a cruise on the Mediterranean, instead of the Caribbean.

Little did we know, our lives would change dramatically on the cruise and thereafter.

For our lunches and dinners on the cruise, we shared a large table with a few couples, paired by the cruise management randomly, I guess. One couple amongst them was Helene and Ernst. They were from Germany. A charming couple in their forties. Mom and Helene became friends instantly.

———

You would have to read the Glory Hole series to find out more.