In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not ultimately consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms close to the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs 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 possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you will be better off should you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. However, if you happen to wait to begin marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at the very least a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing challenge starts if you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, 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 finished product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit a bit further time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
