In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious truth to concentrate 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 in the long run person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s palms close to the start of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for the whole project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to allow at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you possibly can and will begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, if you wait to start out marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow no less than a number of extra weeks, perhaps extra, in your marketing message to achieve the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk 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 when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably allow a bit further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
