In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious fact to pay attention 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 ultimately consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s palms close to the beginning of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be better off if you happen to can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you must remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and should begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the very least a number of further weeks, possibly extra, to your marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins while you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit a little bit extra time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
