In planning any calendar printing mission, 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 is not in the long run person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s hands close to the start of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for gross sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or other occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but understand that you will be higher off for those who can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and will begin advertising and marketing during the planning and production levels of the mission. However, if you happen to wait to start out advertising and marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at least a couple of extra weeks, maybe extra, on your marketing message to reach the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing mission begins once you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable just a little extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
