In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth to concentrate 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 user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s hands close to the start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be higher off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should allow no less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and should begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start advertising till you have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at least a few further weeks, possibly more, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing mission begins once you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you 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 in case you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow a little bit further time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
