In planning any calendar printing venture, 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, in case your calendar will not be in the end consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms close to the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you may be higher off in case you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to remember to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin marketing during the planning and production levels of the project. Nevertheless, in case you wait to begin marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow a minimum of a couple of extra weeks, possibly extra, for your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture starts once you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably permit a bit extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
