In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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, if your calendar just isn’t ultimately consumer’s arms earlier than 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 person’s hands close to the beginning of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably 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 factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you’ll be higher off in the event you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit at the very least 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.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you can and will start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production phases of the mission. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out marketing till you will have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow not less than just a few extra weeks, maybe more, on your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project begins while you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability permit slightly further time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
