In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the end consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s palms close to the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide 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 have to make sure you permit enough 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 will probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be higher off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow at the least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should make sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you may and may start advertising and marketing during the planning and production phases of the project. However, for those who wait to start marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow no less than just a few additional weeks, maybe more, to your advertising message to reach the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably enable a little bit extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
