In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to pay attention 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 in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s hands near the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember that you may be better off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you can and will start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. However, if you wait to start marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than a few extra weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking starts whenever you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss 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 if in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit slightly additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
