In planning any calendar printing project, the most 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 shouldn’t be ultimately person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s fingers close to the start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and promote 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 sales is dependent upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you need to allow at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you must remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you can and may start advertising through the planning and production levels of the venture. Nevertheless, if you wait to start advertising till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow not less than a couple of additional weeks, perhaps more, for your marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission begins whenever you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable a bit extra time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
