In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious truth 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 end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s palms close to the start of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must ensure you enable enough 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 can most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, 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 sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or different event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you may be better off for those who can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you should permit not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you possibly can and should start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the least a number of extra weeks, possibly more, in your marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing venture starts if you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably enable just a little extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
