In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s arms close to the start of school if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for the whole venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, 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 want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you may be higher off in case you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should enable not less than two weeks, and ideally 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 plan to promote, it’s best to be sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you possibly can and will start advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nonetheless, if you wait to start marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow not less than a couple of additional weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge starts once you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make 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’ve got a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability allow a bit of further time – possibly a month in complete – for production.
