In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the long run user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might 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 close to the beginning of college if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? 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 just must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you will be better off in the event you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to enable no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to sell, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, if you wait to start advertising and marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit a minimum of a few further weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability permit slightly extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
