In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar shouldn’t be ultimately user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will want and factor 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 bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off if you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should permit at least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you can and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the challenge. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to start out advertising till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow a minimum of just a few additional weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing challenge begins while you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be 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 when you’ve got a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely allow a little extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
