In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact 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 ultimately consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s arms near the beginning of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you should permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and may begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nevertheless, if you wait to start advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at the least a number of extra weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture starts if you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely allow slightly further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
