In planning any calendar printing mission, the 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 just isn’t in the end person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s arms near the start of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you’ll be higher off should you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to allow no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you may and may begin marketing during the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start advertising and marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the least a number of further weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge starts whenever you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit a little additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
