In planning any calendar printing mission, the most 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, in case your calendar just isn’t in the long run consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? 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 have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you may be better off for those who can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to enable a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and should begin marketing through the planning and production phases of the challenge. Nevertheless, when you wait to begin marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins once you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability permit just a little additional time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
