In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to concentrate 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 is not ultimately consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands close to the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales will depend on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember that you may be better off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must enable not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar challenge – you may and may begin advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. However, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least a few extra weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must probably allow a little extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
