In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to pay attention 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 will not be in the end person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms near the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be higher off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you count on. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should enable no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you possibly can and will start advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, if you wait to start advertising until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than just a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off the entire images, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability enable a bit additional time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
