In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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 is just not in the long run user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got 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 start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to make sure you permit enough 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 is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want 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 complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however needless to say you will be better off should you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you can and may begin marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at least just a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability enable somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
