In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately person’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote 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 upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off in the event you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you can and may begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the mission. Nonetheless, in case you wait to begin advertising until you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow a minimum of a few further weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge starts when you hand off all the images, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure 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 (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely allow just a little additional time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
