In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be ultimately user’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember that you’ll be higher off should you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you count on. Or perhaps you are 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 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and should begin advertising during the planning and manufacturing phases of the project. However, should you wait to start out advertising till you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least a few additional weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge starts once you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit somewhat additional time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
