In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that every 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 person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands close to the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? 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 possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and issue 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 venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you will be better off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should allow a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to remember to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. However, for those who wait to start out advertising till you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow not less than just a few additional weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project begins if you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely enable somewhat extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
