In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the end consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s hands near the beginning of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell 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 is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be better off for those who can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must be sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar mission – you possibly can and will begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nonetheless, if you wait to start advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a few further weeks, possibly extra, in your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing venture starts once you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably allow a bit additional time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
