In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the end user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s palms close to the start of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out 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 just need to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be better off when you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit no less than two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will start advertising and marketing during the planning and production stages of the mission. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to begin marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a few additional weeks, possibly extra, for your advertising message to reach the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge starts once you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a little bit further time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
