In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious truth to concentrate 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 ultimately user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands close to the start of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they will need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales depends on your sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you will be better off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you must enable at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and will start advertising during the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, if you happen to wait to start advertising till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow a minimum of a few extra weeks, maybe more, in your marketing message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing undertaking begins when you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability allow just a little extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
