In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the end person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s hands close to the beginning of faculty if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for all the 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 determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to be sure to permit sufficient 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’ll in all probability 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 factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or different event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you may be higher off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you should permit a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you may and will start advertising and marketing during the planning and production phases of the venture. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to begin marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than a number of further weeks, perhaps more, on your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing venture begins whenever you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable slightly extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
