In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the long run person’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s palms near the beginning of college if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for the whole venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should allow a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as 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 sell, it is best to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nonetheless, for those who wait to begin advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at least a few additional weeks, maybe more, on your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow a bit further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
