In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s hands close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the entire project.
Calendar printing can be broken down into four activities: planning, production, marketing, and distribution. Since we are working backwards, we’ll start with distribution.
Distributing your Printed Calendars
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, 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 maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to make 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 will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local festival or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be better off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should allow at least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Calendars make great Christmas gifts. If that is part of your sales plan, then remember that if you make your calendar available the week before Christmas, many people will already have finished much of their Christmas shopping. If you can start selling right after Thanksgiving, however, then you can catch the early shoppers as well as the last-minute gift-buyers. Of course giving yourself even more sales time is always a good idea. Many of our most successful fundraisers begin selling the calendars as early as September.
Are you selling calendars online? (We can help with that!) If so, then you will need to allow for shipping time. That means that for Christmas gifts, you will want to have most of your calendars sold by about December 15th, otherwise your buyers will have to pay for expedited shipping. You need to allow enough time for people to find your calendar online, so you would probably want to have your calendar available for sale online by about mid-November.
Or maybe your are selling calendars in retail locations. If so, talk to your retailers early. You will probably find out that they prefer to have their Christmas merchandise in hand by the 1st of September or even sooner. That way they can keep shelves full as they remove Summer items. Chain retailers such as the major booksellers may want calendars in hand as soon as July, so that they can warehouse them and distribute them to their own locations. Also, check with retailers about packaging and labeling requirements – they may need your calendars to be shrink-wrapped and to include ISBN barcodes.