In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality 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 just isn’t ultimately person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be higher off in case you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must allow at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you need to make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and will begin marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the mission. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start out marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a number of additional weeks, maybe more, on your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to 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 in case you have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit a little additional time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
