In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth 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 is not in the long run person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms near the start of faculty if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area pageant or other event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be better off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to allow at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar mission – you can and may start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. However, if you happen to wait to begin advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at least a few additional weeks, possibly more, for your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture begins whenever you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, 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 completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit just a little additional time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
