In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious truth 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 isn’t in the end person’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s hands close to the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion will not be what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit no less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and will begin advertising through the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at least just a few further weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge begins when you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a specific 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 permit a bit additional time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
