In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality 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 isn’t in the long run consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s hands near the beginning of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine 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 just need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply 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 propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you will be better off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you may and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start out marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit a minimum of a couple of additional weeks, possibly more, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then 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 long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability permit somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
