In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not in the long run person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms near the start of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy 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. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember that you will be higher off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should allow not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and will start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the venture. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at least just a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising message to achieve the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability allow a bit of extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.