In planning any calendar printing venture, the obvious fact to pay attention 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 is not in the long run user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s hands close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to 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 simply need to be sure to enable enough 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’ll most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, 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 difficult. How a lot time you want for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be higher off when you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should remember to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and will start advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. However, if you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow a minimum of just a few additional weeks, possibly more, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing venture begins when you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then 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’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must most likely enable a little bit additional time – maybe a month in total – for production.
