In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality 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 in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands near the start of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you’ll be better off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to allow at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin advertising in the course of the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit a minimum of a few further weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising message to achieve the supposed audience and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking begins whenever you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow a little extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
