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 is not in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms close to the start of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for the whole challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it is best to allow not less than two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you may and will begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, if you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow not less than a few additional weeks, maybe more, for your marketing message to reach the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing mission begins whenever you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely allow a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
