In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the end consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s arms near the start of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must 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 handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra 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 venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you will be higher off in case you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar project – you may and should begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the undertaking. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start out marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at least just a few additional weeks, perhaps more, for your marketing message to achieve the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, etc. 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 to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit slightly extra time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.