In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to concentrate 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 is just not in the long run consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s fingers near the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be higher off in case you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must permit at the least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to remember to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar project – you possibly can and may begin marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the venture. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a few further weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project begins whenever you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. 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. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (generally sooner if you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should most likely enable a little bit extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
