In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the end person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s palms near the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but understand that you will be better off in case you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you may and will begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start advertising till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, possibly extra, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so on. 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. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit a bit extra time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
