In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s palms close to the beginning of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however needless to say you will be better off should you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and will start advertising during the planning and production levels of the undertaking. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a few additional weeks, perhaps more, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project begins whenever you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit somewhat further time – maybe a month in total – for production.
