In planning any calendar printing project, the most 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, in case your calendar will not be in the end consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s arms close to the start of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the whole undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area competition or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you may be higher off if you happen to can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you must you should definitely develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and should begin advertising through the planning and production levels of the venture. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to start out advertising and marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a couple of additional weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge begins when you hand off all of the images, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably permit a little bit further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
