In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to concentrate 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 isn’t in the long run person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms close to the beginning of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot 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 bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be better off in the event you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you need to enable no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should make sure you develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will begin advertising during the planning and production levels of the project. However, should you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a couple of extra weeks, maybe more, to your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing challenge starts whenever you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to probably permit a little further time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
