In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s arms close to the start of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine 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 have to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you may be higher off if you happen to can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to allow not less than 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.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and should start advertising and marketing through the planning and production levels of the venture. However, when you wait to start out marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the least a number of additional weeks, maybe more, on your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing venture starts once you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss 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 if you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability allow a bit of extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
