In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the end person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you will be higher off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar venture – you may and should begin advertising and marketing through the planning and production levels of the mission. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture starts whenever you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit just a little additional time – possibly a month in total – for production.
