In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious reality 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 hands before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and factor 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 little more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area festival or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should enable no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you possibly can and should begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. However, in the event you wait to begin advertising till you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least just a few further weeks, maybe extra, on your marketing message to reach the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts when you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow a little extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
