In planning any calendar printing challenge, 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 just not in the end user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s hands near the beginning of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local festival or different event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you’ll be better off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must allow not less than two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to be sure you develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and production stages of the undertaking. However, if you wait to begin marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow no less than a number of additional weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts when you hand off all the images, textual content, 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 finished product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must probably enable a bit of extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
