In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the 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 is not in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers close to the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan 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 gross sales relies on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or different event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be better off in the event you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you possibly can and may start marketing during the planning and production stages of the mission. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than a few further weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission begins while you hand off all the images, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability enable slightly additional time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
