In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be in the end user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s arms close to the start of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure you permit 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 would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however understand that you will be higher off should you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and should start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the undertaking. However, in the event you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow no less than a couple of extra weeks, perhaps more, for your marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge starts once you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. 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. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit somewhat additional time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
