In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not in the end person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine 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 clients or members; in that case you just must be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may 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 enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you will be better off for those who can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you count on. Or perhaps 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 at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you may and may start advertising in the course of the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to begin marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow no less than a couple of additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and motivate them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins when you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability enable a bit extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
