In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however needless to say you may be better off if you happen to can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to allow not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you may and should start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. However, should you wait to begin marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit a minimum of a couple of additional weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts when you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk 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 specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit just a little further time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
