In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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, if your calendar shouldn’t be ultimately consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off for those who can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should enable at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general period of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and should begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the challenge. However, should you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at the very least just a few additional weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project starts once you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a bit extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
