In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality 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 ultimately person’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers close to the start of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for sales will depend on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you’ll be better off for those who can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit not less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you may and may start marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nonetheless, if you wait to start advertising till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the least a few additional weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts if you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places 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 normally about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
