In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most 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 will not be in the long run person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms close to the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off if you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must enable at least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you may and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and production phases of the mission. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit a minimum of a number of additional weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins if you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability permit a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
