In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality 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 just isn’t in the end user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for all the mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s palms? 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 will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must ensure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, 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 complicated. How a lot time you want for sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at an area pageant or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you may and may begin marketing throughout the planning and production stages of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit a minimum of a few additional weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss 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 if you have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow slightly additional time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
