In planning any calendar printing challenge, 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 isn’t in the long run person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms close to the start of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for all the project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off should you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to allow at the least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, for those who wait to start advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit no less than just a few further weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins while you hand off all of the images, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow a bit extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
