In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to pay attention 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 ultimately consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands near the beginning of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you’ll be better off in the event you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to enable at least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you possibly can and will start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. However, should you wait to start advertising and marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the very least a few further weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed audience and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge starts when you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
