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 the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms close to the start of college if it will 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 end user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area festival or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be better off when you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow at the 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 just plan to promote, you must you should definitely develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should begin marketing through the planning and production phases of the project. However, should you wait to start marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least a few extra weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the intended audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins when you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should probably enable a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
