In planning any calendar printing venture, the most 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 in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s fingers near the start of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for all the challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must 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 must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should allow a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and may start advertising in the course of the planning and production phases of the mission. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start out advertising and marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit not less than a number of further weeks, perhaps more, to your marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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 finished product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability permit a little extra time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
