In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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 is just not in the long run user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers near the start of school if it is going to be useful 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 top person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you need to make sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you can and may begin advertising during the planning and production phases of the undertaking. Nonetheless, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow not less than just a few extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit somewhat extra time – maybe a month in whole – for production.