In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each 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 end user’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may 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 will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must make 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 is going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you may be higher off if you happen to can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to remember to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you may and may start advertising through the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to begin advertising and marketing until you have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least a couple of extra weeks, possibly more, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture starts whenever you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability enable a little extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
