In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality 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 isn’t in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s hands close to the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both 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 is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you may be better off in the event you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to remember to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and may start advertising and marketing through the planning and production levels of the mission. However, should you wait to start advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at the least a few further weeks, perhaps extra, on your marketing message to reach the meant audience and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts once you hand off the entire images, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably allow a bit additional time – possibly a month in total – for production.
