In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t ultimately person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s palms close to the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off for those who can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to enable at the least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should begin advertising and marketing through the planning and production stages of the challenge. However, if you happen to wait to start out advertising until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the least a couple of additional weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely enable a bit further time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
