In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious reality 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 shouldn’t be in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the whole undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be higher off in case you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should allow no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you may and will start advertising through the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, when you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit not less than a few extra weeks, perhaps more, for your marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing challenge starts when you hand off the entire images, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure 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 (typically sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a little extra time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
