In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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 end user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s hands near the beginning of college if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? 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 are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you need for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must permit at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general period of the calendar project – you possibly can and may begin advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing stages of the undertaking. However, for those who wait to begin advertising and marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the very least a number of further weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking starts if you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability permit somewhat additional time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
