In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not in the end consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers near the start of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought 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 maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be better off in case you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you need to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising during the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start out marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the very least just a few further weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts if you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak 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 have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit a bit of extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
