In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious truth 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 just isn’t in the end person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers near the start of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the whole undertaking.
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 will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for sales will depend on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off in case you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit at least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you possibly can and will begin marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the very least a number of additional weeks, maybe more, on your advertising message to achieve the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins whenever you hand off all the images, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss 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 in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely enable just a little further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
