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 shouldn’t be in the long run user’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s palms near the start of school if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be higher off if you happen to can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion should not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must allow no less than two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you possibly can and should begin marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a few further weeks, possibly extra, on your marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to 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 you probably have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably permit just a little extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
