In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms close to the beginning of college if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you may be better off for those who can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to allow at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you can and may begin marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the challenge. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start out advertising until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow no less than a few extra weeks, possibly extra, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended audience and motivate them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission begins while you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability allow slightly extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
