In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious reality 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 person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s hands close to the start of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should 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 might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be higher off for those who can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should enable no less than 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 the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you may and should start advertising in the course of the planning and production stages of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places 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 is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a bit further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
