In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not in the end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands close to the beginning of college if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be better off in case you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should enable not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will begin advertising during the planning and production phases of the project. Nevertheless, when you wait to start advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a few further weeks, perhaps more, for your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a little bit extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
