In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious fact to concentrate 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 will not be in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for the whole undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off for those who can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to allow at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and will start marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. However, if you wait to start advertising till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the least a couple of further weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off the entire images, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed 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 (sometimes sooner you probably 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 most likely allow a bit additional time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
