In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the end consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s hands close to the beginning of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be better off should you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should you’ll want to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you may and may begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. Nonetheless, should you wait to start out marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at the least a couple of extra weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to reach the intended viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow a little additional time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
