In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the whole undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you may be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should begin marketing through the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start out advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at least a number of additional weeks, maybe more, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project begins if you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so on. 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 completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability permit somewhat additional time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
