In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the 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, in case your calendar is just not in the long run person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may need and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you need for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at an area pageant or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be higher off when you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you must allow at least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar project – you can and should start marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. However, if you wait to begin marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at the least a number of extra weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places 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 often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably enable a little bit extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
