In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s palms near the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine 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 need to be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be better off should you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you expect. 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 as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you possibly can and should begin marketing during the planning and production phases of the venture. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at the very least just a few extra weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely permit a little bit extra time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
