In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the long run user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s hands close to the beginning of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? 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 will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off when you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to allow not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you may and should start advertising throughout the planning and production stages of the mission. Nevertheless, in case you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least a couple of additional weeks, perhaps more, to your marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project starts if you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably permit just a little additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
