Brown and Bigelow of Saint Paul, Minnesota, is the world's oldest calendar company. Around
1903 the firm
produced its first calendar with a female subject "Colette" (from a painting from Angelo Asti),
a "charming but
conservative portrait of a young beauty." In the years that followed, "Colette" helped to sell
more than 1.5 million
calendars. In 1904 the first pin-up calendar indicated that the manufacture of "girlie" calendars
could be a
lucrative business.