In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s arms near the start of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for the entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must make sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may want and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales depends on your sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember that you will be higher off should you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you can and should start marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the undertaking. Nevertheless, if you wait to start marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a few extra weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and motivate them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing mission begins once you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work 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 normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably enable a little bit further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
