In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must 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 are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must ensure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may need and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for gross sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be higher off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to allow not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you may and should start advertising and marketing through the planning and production stages of the mission. Nevertheless, when you wait to begin marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a few additional weeks, maybe more, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts once you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must most likely enable a bit extra time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
