In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious fact 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 ultimately consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands close to the beginning of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to be sure to enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be better off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you count on. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you can and should begin marketing during the planning and production phases of the mission. However, for those who wait to start advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than just a few further weeks, perhaps extra, to your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing mission begins once you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you discuss 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 when you’ve got a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely enable a little bit further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
