In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s arms close to the start of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll 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 venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you’ll be better off when you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must permit at the least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you may and should begin advertising during the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. However, in case you wait to start advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at least a few additional weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising message to succeed in the intended audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts when you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit somewhat further time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
