In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact to pay attention 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 will not be in the long run user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s arms near the beginning of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for your entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must make sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose 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 sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be better off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you count on. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar challenge – you may and will begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the project. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start out advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the least a couple of extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising message to reach the intended audience and motivate them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge begins once you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably allow a little additional time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
