In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the end consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s palms close to the start of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember that you may be better off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you need to allow at least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to promote, you must you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you possibly can and should start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. Nevertheless, for those who wait to begin advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the least a few additional weeks, maybe extra, in your marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission begins once you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
