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 the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands close to the start of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but remember the fact that you will be higher off when you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must allow at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you possibly can and will start advertising through the planning and production levels of the mission. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit no less than a few additional weeks, possibly more, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should most likely allow just a little additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
