In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious fact 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 isn’t in the long run consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will need and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales will depend on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area festival or different event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you may be better off for those who can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to you’ll want to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and will start advertising during the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nevertheless, if you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins if you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure 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 (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow slightly further time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
