In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar shouldn’t be in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers near the start of college if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however needless to say you may be better off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to permit at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you can and may start advertising through the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a few additional weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing project begins while you hand off all the images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if 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 is best to in all probability allow just a little further time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
