In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to pay attention 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 just isn’t in the end consumer’s fingers 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 within the user’s arms close to the beginning of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to 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’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area competition or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be better off should you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should allow at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you possibly can and should start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, in case you wait to start out marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit a minimum of a number of additional weeks, possibly more, for your marketing message to achieve the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture starts if you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
