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 a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be ultimately user’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s hands close to the start of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may want 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 sophisticated. How much time you need for sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be better off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should permit no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar project – you can and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and production phases of the venture. However, when you wait to begin marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the very least a couple of extra weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking starts whenever you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability allow a bit of additional time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
