In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to concentrate 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 isn’t in the end person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms close to the start of college 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 top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, 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 difficult. How a lot time you need for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you may be higher off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you must you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. Nonetheless, in case you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the least a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing venture begins if you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you discuss 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 have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit a little additional time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
