In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s fingers near the start of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for all the challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales relies on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but remember the fact that you will be better off when you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and will start advertising through the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a number of additional weeks, maybe extra, in your marketing message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing project begins if you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably enable just a little additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
