In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious reality 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 just isn’t in the long run user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off when you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you may and should start advertising through the planning and manufacturing stages of the undertaking. However, when you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow no less than a few further weeks, possibly extra, for your marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture starts if you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. 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 you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit slightly further time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
