In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not in the end 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 needs to be in the user’s palms close to the beginning of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you will be better off should you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you can and may begin advertising through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. However, in the event you wait to begin advertising till you might have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the least a number of additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising message to reach the meant viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking begins once you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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 usually about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit just a little extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
