In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to concentrate 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 ultimately person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s palms close to the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure to enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they will need and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you will be better off for those who can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to enable at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you need to remember to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you possibly can and should begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nonetheless, if you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a couple of extra weeks, maybe extra, on your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then 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 have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably enable a little bit further time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
