In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that each 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 user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands close to the start of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure to enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and factor 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 a lot time you need for sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area pageant or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be better off if you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you should make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the venture. Nevertheless, if you wait to start marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the very least a couple of further weeks, maybe more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge begins whenever you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely allow somewhat further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
