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 a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end person’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s palms near the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may want and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend 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 upon your sales technique. Are you selling at an area pageant or other event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you will be higher off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit at the least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will begin marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the mission. Nonetheless, in case you wait to begin marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising message to reach the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing project begins once you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a little further time – maybe a month in total – for production.
