In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious truth to concentrate 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 is just not ultimately user’s palms before 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 needs to be within the person’s palms near the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may need and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you will be higher off in the event you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit at the least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should start marketing through the planning and production stages of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start advertising until you will have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at the very least just a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, to your marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow a little bit extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
