In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms close to the start of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out 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 prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be better off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and may begin marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start out advertising till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a number of additional weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising message to achieve the intended viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing project begins while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should probably enable somewhat extra time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
