In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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, in case your calendar shouldn’t be in the long run consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s hands near the beginning of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you will be higher off should you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow at the least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you may and should begin advertising throughout the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin advertising until you could have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a few extra weeks, possibly more, for your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely enable a bit of extra time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
