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 not in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms close to the beginning of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine 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 must be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you will be better off should you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to permit at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar challenge – you may and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to start advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at the very least a couple of extra weeks, maybe extra, for your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. 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 finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow a bit extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
