In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s hands close to the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for the whole challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you’ll be higher off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow at the least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you need to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar project – you can and should begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing phases of the project. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start advertising until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, for your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit somewhat additional time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
