In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be in the end consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s fingers near the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to 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’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you will be better off when you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to allow not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you must remember to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you may and will start advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. However, in the event you wait to start advertising and marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the least a number of additional weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to succeed in the intended audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing project begins while you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss 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 you probably have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must probably allow somewhat further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
