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 a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar shouldn’t be in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at an area competition or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you’ll be higher off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you may and should start advertising and marketing during the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, if you wait to start marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than a couple of further weeks, perhaps extra, for your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off all of the images, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit somewhat further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
