In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not ultimately person’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s arms close to the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you’ll be higher off if you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to enable at least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you may and should start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. Nonetheless, for those who wait to begin advertising and marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit no less than a number of further weeks, possibly more, for your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places 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’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability allow somewhat additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
