In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to concentrate 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 user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. 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 beginning of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may want and issue it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you may be better off in the event you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should permit a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will begin marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the undertaking. Nonetheless, should you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than a few further weeks, possibly more, to your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so on. 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. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must most likely enable slightly additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
