In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious fact 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 isn’t in the end consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan 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 want for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you may be better off in case you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable at least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and should start advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nevertheless, when you wait to start marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least a couple of extra weeks, perhaps extra, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts if you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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 completed product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably allow slightly further time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
