In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that each 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 arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s hands close to the start of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for your entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be better off if you happen to can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should allow at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the project. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the least just a few additional weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising message to achieve the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts when you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must most likely permit a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
