In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to concentrate 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 will not be in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to 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 handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off if you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to allow at 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.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you may and may start advertising and marketing through the planning and production stages of the mission. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to begin advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit no less than a couple of extra weeks, perhaps extra, to your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts once you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, promoting, etc. 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 completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must most likely allow a little further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
