In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious truth 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 user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s fingers near the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales relies on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should enable a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you can and may start advertising through the planning and production levels of the project. However, in the event you wait to start marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least just a few further weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to achieve the meant audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture begins whenever you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability enable a little bit further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
