In planning any calendar printing venture, the most 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, in case your calendar just isn’t in the long run consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may want 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 sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be better off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should enable at least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin advertising during the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. Nevertheless, if you wait to start marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than a few further weeks, maybe more, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure 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 (generally sooner if you have a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely enable somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
