In planning any calendar printing project, 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 is just not in the end person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the start of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must ensure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and issue 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 venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales depends on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you may be higher off should you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion will not be what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to allow at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and production levels of the undertaking. Nonetheless, if you wait to begin marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow a minimum of a number of additional weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a selected deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to probably permit a bit of additional time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
