In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have found 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 fingers near the beginning of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll need and issue 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 venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however understand that you’ll be higher off in the event you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it is best to allow at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must remember to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you can and should start advertising through the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. However, if you happen to wait to start advertising and marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit not less than a number of extra weeks, perhaps extra, to your marketing message to reach the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge begins while you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss 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 if you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must most likely permit a little extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
