In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that every 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 long run user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms close to the beginning of school if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you may be better off when you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and will begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nonetheless, for those who wait to begin advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit no less than a number of extra weeks, maybe more, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking begins whenever you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make 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 (typically sooner in case you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a bit of additional time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
