In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar shouldn’t be in the end person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for all the mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off should you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar project – you may and will start marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. However, in the event you wait to start advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than a number of extra weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to reach the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability allow a bit additional time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
