In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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, if your calendar is just not in the end user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s palms near the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may want and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you will be better off in case you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you may and may start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at least a few further weeks, perhaps extra, for your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts if you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a bit of further time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
