In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be in the long run person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s palms close to the beginning of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be better off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to allow at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you possibly can and will start advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start marketing till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a few extra weeks, possibly more, for your advertising message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge starts whenever you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability allow slightly extra time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
