In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not in the end user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might 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 consumer’s palms close to the start of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to 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 are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, 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 sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember that you will be better off in case you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to enable no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should start advertising in the course of the planning and production levels of the venture. Nonetheless, when you wait to begin advertising till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at least a number of additional weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising message to achieve the intended viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge starts whenever you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability permit a bit additional time – possibly a month in total – for production.
