In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands close to the start of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for all the mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off in case you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable no less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar challenge – you can and may start advertising throughout the planning and production levels of the mission. Nonetheless, should you wait to start out marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, possibly more, on your marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off all the photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. 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 discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should most likely enable slightly additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
