In planning any calendar printing project, the most 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 is just not in the long run person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s palms close to the start of school if it’s going to 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 tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out 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 prospects or members; in that case you just have to be sure to permit 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 ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off should you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must enable a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and may begin advertising through the planning and manufacturing levels of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than just a few extra weeks, maybe extra, on your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to probably allow just a little additional time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
