In planning any calendar printing venture, the most 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, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms near the start of school if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you selling at a local competition or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember that you may be better off for those who can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to permit at the least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a number of extra weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge starts if you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability permit a bit further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
