In planning any calendar printing venture, 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, if your calendar is not ultimately person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s arms near the start of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you may be better off in the event you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you count on. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must permit no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you must remember to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and should start advertising and marketing during the planning and production levels of the undertaking. However, in the event you wait to start out advertising till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow not less than a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, in your marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off all the images, text, logos, advertising, etc. 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 completed product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must most likely allow a bit further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
