In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality 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 just isn’t in the end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternative. 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 faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you’ll be higher off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar project – you may and should begin marketing throughout the planning and production stages of the project. Nonetheless, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow not less than a number of additional weeks, possibly more, for your marketing message to reach the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing mission starts when you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you speak 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 if you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit a little extra time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
