In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s arms close to the beginning of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be higher off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you count on. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should allow no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and will start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nonetheless, when you wait to start out advertising until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at least a few extra weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising message to reach the intended viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project begins while you hand off all the photos, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow a little bit further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
