In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar shouldn’t be in the long run person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could 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 arms close to the beginning of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at an area pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you will be higher off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to be sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and may start advertising through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. However, if you wait to start advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least just a few extra weeks, maybe extra, to your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which puts 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 often about three weeks (generally sooner when you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit slightly additional time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.