In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to concentrate 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 ultimately person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms near the start of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the whole venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, 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 possibly you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and will begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at least a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, to your marketing message to reach the meant viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing venture starts once you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must most likely allow slightly further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
