In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to concentrate 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 long run consumer’s palms 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 in the consumer’s hands close to the beginning of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the whole challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’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 have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need 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 venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember the fact that you’ll be higher off in the event you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to permit no less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you possibly can and may start advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, should you wait to start marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than a few extra weeks, possibly more, on your marketing message to achieve the meant audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins if you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (generally sooner when you have a selected deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must most likely permit slightly extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
