In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most 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 isn’t ultimately person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s arms near the start of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they will want and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but take into account that you’ll be better off in the event you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you possibly can and may start marketing through the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. Nevertheless, in case you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than a few extra weeks, possibly extra, for your advertising message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts whenever you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. 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 talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow a bit of extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
