In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that every 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 long run user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms near the start of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for all the challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be higher off in the event you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must enable at the least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production stages of the project. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start out advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit not less than a few additional weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing venture begins if you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit a bit of further time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
