In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth 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 just not in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want 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 sophisticated. How much time you want for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should you’ll want to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you can and may start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, for those who wait to begin marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit a minimum of a few further weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak 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 in case you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely enable a bit of further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
