In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the end person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s palms close to the start of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for all the mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will want and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you may be better off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit at least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to remember to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will start marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. However, if you happen to wait to start marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at the very least a number of additional weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit just a little further time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
