In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact 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 will not be ultimately consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the beginning of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you’ll be higher off should you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you possibly can and should begin advertising throughout the planning and production levels of the undertaking. However, should you wait to begin marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit a minimum of just a few additional weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed audience and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing venture starts when you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to 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 lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably allow a bit further time – maybe a month in total – for production.
