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 a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be ultimately user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s hands close to the start of college if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply 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 an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be better off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion aren’t what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should enable no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and should begin marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, should you wait to start out marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the very least a few further weeks, maybe more, on your advertising message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins while you hand off all the images, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability enable somewhat additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
