In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that every 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 user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers close to the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you’ll be better off for those who can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to enable no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the venture. However, should you wait to start advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at least a few further weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising message to reach the intended viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished 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 if you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit a bit of further time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
