In planning any calendar printing venture, the 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 long run consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s palms close to the beginning of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you may be better off if you happen to can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow at the least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you can and should start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a number of additional weeks, perhaps more, to your marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a little further time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
