In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious truth to pay attention 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 shouldn’t be in the end user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands near the start of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’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 want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off when you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must allow at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you should remember to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar challenge – you can and will start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow at the least a few extra weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project begins whenever you hand off all the photos, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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 finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit a bit of further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
