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 a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s arms near the beginning of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should allow not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should make sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you possibly can and will start advertising through the planning and manufacturing stages of the undertaking. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out advertising until you might have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at least a couple of extra weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing undertaking begins if you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which 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’s often about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely allow somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
