In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar shouldn’t be ultimately user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s arms close to the beginning of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will need 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 a lot time you need for sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you may and will begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. However, if you wait to begin advertising till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a couple of further weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability enable just a little further time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
