In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s palms near the start of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be higher off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you may and may begin advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. Nonetheless, in case you wait to start marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at least just a few further weeks, maybe more, for your marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture starts whenever you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must probably enable slightly additional time – possibly a month in total – for production.
