In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not in the long run person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure to 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 should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and promote 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 gross sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be better off in case you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must allow at the least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you may and may start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start out marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit not less than a number of further weeks, maybe more, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow just a little extra time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
