In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t ultimately consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers near the start of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to ensure you enable enough 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 will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may want and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area festival or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must allow not 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 plan to sell, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you may and will begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out advertising until you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow a minimum of a few extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you discuss 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 selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable a little extra time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
