In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively 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 clients or members; in that case you just need to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales will depend on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but take into account that you will be higher off when you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should permit no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at the least a few further weeks, maybe extra, in your marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork 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 lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to probably permit a bit of additional time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
