In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the end person’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s palms close to the beginning of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to ensure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will want and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be better off if you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you may and should begin marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the mission. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start advertising till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than just a few further weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and motivate them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing challenge begins once you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability permit a little additional time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
