In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to concentrate 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 is just not in the end consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms close to the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must ensure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off in the event you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you may and will begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. However, should you wait to start out advertising until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit not less than just a few additional weeks, perhaps more, on your marketing message to reach the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts once you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit a bit further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
