In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious fact 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 is just not in the end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms close to the start of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or other event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but take into account that you may be higher off should you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must enable a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you can and should start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the mission. However, if you wait to begin marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a few extra weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising message to achieve the intended viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing venture starts if you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability allow a bit additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
