In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s fingers near the start of school if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, 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 want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you may be better off when you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you possibly can and should start advertising throughout the planning and production levels of the undertaking. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start out advertising till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, possibly extra, to your marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off all the photos, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places 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 have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability allow a bit additional time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
