In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious truth to pay attention 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 isn’t in the end person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers close to the start of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for sales will depend on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you will be higher off in the event you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to allow not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must be sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you can and should start marketing throughout the planning and production phases of the mission. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit no less than a few extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit just a little extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
