In planning any calendar printing venture, the 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 just isn’t in the end person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms near the beginning of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off for those who can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to permit at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to be 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 should start marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the mission. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a number of extra weeks, possibly more, on your advertising message to achieve the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts whenever you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. 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 to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably allow slightly additional time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
