In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s palms close to the start of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the whole undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose 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 want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be better off if you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you should be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you may and should begin marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least just a few further weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit somewhat further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
