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, in case your calendar is not in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be better off in case you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you can and may begin marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a few extra weeks, maybe more, on your marketing message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow a little bit further time – maybe a month in total – for production.
