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 the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the end person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands close to the beginning of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be higher off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must enable at least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you may and will start advertising through the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at least a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, to your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking begins if you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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 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 (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit just a little further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
