In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be ultimately consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s hands near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will want and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or different event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you may be better off if you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must allow at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising in the course of the planning and production stages of the venture. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start out marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow not less than just a few additional weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing project begins once you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability permit somewhat further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
