In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the whole project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need 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 enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however understand that you may be higher off in case you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and will begin marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the challenge. However, when you wait to start advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit a minimum of a number of further weeks, possibly more, for your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places 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 (typically sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable slightly extra time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
