In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s arms close to the beginning of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and will start advertising during the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. However, in the event you wait to begin marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than just a few additional weeks, maybe more, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture starts once you hand off all of the images, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to 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 have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability enable somewhat further time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
