In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth 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 is not in the end person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s arms near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or different occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but needless to say you will be better off when you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you can and will start advertising during the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. Nevertheless, if you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow not less than a number of extra weeks, possibly more, on your advertising message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture begins when you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a bit extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
