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 a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s palms close to the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for the complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember that you’ll be higher off should you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will begin advertising through the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. However, for those who wait to begin marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the least just a few additional weeks, maybe more, to your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins if you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a little extra time – possibly a month in complete – for production.
