In planning any calendar printing challenge, the 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, in case your calendar is just not in the long run user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the start of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for the whole undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off if you happen to can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you can and may start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. However, for those who wait to begin advertising till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a few extra weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising message to achieve the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission begins if you hand off all the images, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must most likely allow a little bit extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
