In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious reality 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 isn’t ultimately consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s arms close to the beginning of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you will be better off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and may start advertising during the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. Nonetheless, should you wait to begin advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit not less than a couple of additional weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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 finished product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably allow just a little extra time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
