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 the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not ultimately person’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms near the beginning of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you may be better off if you happen to can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must permit no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and should begin marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the mission. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to begin marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the least a number of additional weeks, perhaps extra, to your marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then 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 lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit slightly further time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
