In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not ultimately consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the beginning 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 venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further 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 bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area pageant or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you’ll be better off when you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you must be sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you may and will start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the project. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at the least a couple of additional weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture starts whenever you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. 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. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit a bit additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
