In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the long run user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s hands near the start of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the 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 maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure you permit 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 is going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and promote 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 sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be better off in case you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to allow not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and may start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the undertaking. However, in case you wait to start marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit a minimum of a number of further weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins if you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability enable somewhat extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
