In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the long run consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s arms near the start of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine 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 simply must make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and promote 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 depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area festival or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but remember that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and will begin advertising through the planning and manufacturing phases of the project. However, if you wait to begin advertising until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least a couple of further weeks, possibly extra, for your marketing message to reach the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably allow a bit additional time – maybe a month in total – for production.
