In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t ultimately person’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s fingers near the start of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off when you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to allow no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. However, should you wait to start advertising till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least just a few extra weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing mission begins while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to probably allow slightly extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
