In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t ultimately user’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands near the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you will be higher off should you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you need to enable at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and will begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, in case you wait to begin advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at the very least a number of extra weeks, possibly more, in your marketing message to achieve the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge begins while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit somewhat extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
