In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to pay attention 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 ultimately person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers near the beginning of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively 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 prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they will want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you may be higher off if you happen to can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you may and should start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the project. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least a number of extra weeks, perhaps more, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably enable just a little further time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
