In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s fingers near the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to ensure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but needless to say you will be better off in the event you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit 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.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to promote, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you can and should begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the mission. Nevertheless, in case you wait to begin advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a couple of further weeks, maybe more, in your marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts if you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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 finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably enable just a little further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
