In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to pay attention 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 just isn’t in the end consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms 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 your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you may be better off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you should permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to remember to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you may and will begin marketing through the planning and production levels of the undertaking. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start advertising and marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the least a few extra weeks, perhaps more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing mission begins whenever you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably enable just a little extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
