In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales relies on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be better off in the event you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and will begin marketing throughout the planning and production stages of the mission. However, should you wait to start out advertising till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at the least a couple of additional weeks, maybe extra, to your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing venture begins whenever you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably allow a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
