In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the end user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s hands near the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will want and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or other event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be better off if you happen to can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and will begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, if you wait to begin advertising until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit no less than just a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing challenge begins when you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely enable a bit of further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
