In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have found 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 near the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be better off should you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to remember to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may start advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. However, in the event you wait to start advertising until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the least a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability permit a bit of extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
