In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s hands near the beginning of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to make sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account 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 be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you’ll be higher off should you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should allow at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and should start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a few additional weeks, possibly extra, in your marketing message to reach the intended viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts once you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow somewhat extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
