In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious fact 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 isn’t in the long run person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s palms near the start of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for sales will depend on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you may be better off for those who can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit at least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you possibly can and may start advertising during the planning and production stages of the project. Nonetheless, if you wait to start out marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the least a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge starts if you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and many others. 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. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably permit a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
