In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not in the end consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s arms near the start of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell 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 will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area competition or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be higher off for those who can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should allow at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should remember to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you may and will start marketing throughout the planning and production phases of the undertaking. However, when you wait to begin advertising until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, maybe more, for your marketing message to succeed in the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture begins when you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which 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’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must probably enable just a little extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
