In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth 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 not ultimately consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands close to the beginning of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you may be higher off in case you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you can and should start marketing during the planning and production levels of the undertaking. However, when you wait to start advertising until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than a few additional weeks, maybe more, to your marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts whenever you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure 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 particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely enable a bit of additional time – possibly a month in total – for production.
