In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to pay attention 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 just isn’t in the end consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands near the beginning of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for all the mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may need and issue 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 bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you will be higher off in the event you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should permit not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the mission. However, if you wait to start advertising until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow not less than a couple of further weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts once you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow a bit of further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
