In planning any calendar printing mission, 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, if your calendar will not be in the long run user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s arms close to the beginning of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively 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 clients or members; in that case you just must make 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 deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off in case you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you count on. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nonetheless, for those who wait to begin advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow no less than a couple of further weeks, possibly more, for your advertising message to succeed in the intended viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must probably enable slightly additional time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
