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 long run user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s palms near the beginning of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they are going to need and issue 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 difficult. How much time you want for gross sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you will be better off if you happen to can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it is best to allow not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general period of the calendar project – you may and may begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the project. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than a number of further weeks, perhaps extra, on your marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project begins when you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability permit a bit further time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
