In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the long run user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers near the start of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and issue 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 bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be better off for those who can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you need to permit a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and should start advertising and marketing through the planning and production stages of the undertaking. However, in the event you wait to start out marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at the very least a few further weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow a little extra time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
