In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t ultimately consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands close to the beginning of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however understand that you’ll be better off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should you’ll want to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and should begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the mission. Nevertheless, in case you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit a minimum of a couple of further weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture begins if you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must most likely enable a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
