In planning any calendar printing venture, the most 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, in case your calendar will not be in the long run consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s palms near the start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may need and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell 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 sales depends on your sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be better off should you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to enable at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you can and will begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out advertising until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a couple of further weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge begins while you hand off all the photos, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which 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 lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability permit a little bit further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
