In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might already have 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 fingers near the beginning of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide 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 simply need to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may need and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be better off if you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must 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 plan to sell, you need to make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you can and will start marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the mission. However, if you wait to begin marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than just a few further weeks, possibly more, in your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing project begins whenever you hand off all the images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then 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 usually about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely enable a bit of additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
