In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality 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 not in the long run consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s fingers near the beginning of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember the fact that you may be higher off for those who can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to make sure you develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and may start marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the undertaking. However, for those who wait to start advertising till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at least a number of extra weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing project starts once you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings 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 is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case 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 probably enable a bit of further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
