In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the end person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s arms near the start of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or different event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must enable a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you may and may begin marketing through the planning and production levels of the mission. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising and marketing until you have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the very least a number of additional weeks, possibly more, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts when you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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 finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow a little extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
