In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that each 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 user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s hands close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for your entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area festival or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you will be better off should you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to allow at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you can and may start advertising through the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. However, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit a minimum of a few extra weeks, perhaps more, to your marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project begins once you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely enable a bit of extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
