In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious truth to concentrate 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 shouldn’t be in the long run user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms near the start of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for gross sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off if you happen to can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you may and may start marketing during the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the least a number of further weeks, maybe extra, on your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge starts if you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit a little extra time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
