In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to concentrate to is that every 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 user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s fingers close to the start of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you selling at a local competition or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be better off in the event you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should be sure you develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the challenge. However, if you happen to wait to start out advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a number of extra weeks, maybe extra, in your marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit somewhat extra time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
