In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality 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 isn’t in the end person’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s palms close to the beginning of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for sales depends on your sales technique. Are you selling at an area competition or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but needless to say you will be better off for those who can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and should begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the undertaking. However, in case you wait to start out marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow not less than a few extra weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission starts once you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit a little further time – possibly a month in complete – for production.
