In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality 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 just isn’t in the end consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s arms close to the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be better off in the event you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar project – you may and may start marketing throughout the planning and production phases of the challenge. Nevertheless, when you wait to start advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the very least just a few extra weeks, maybe more, to your marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must most likely permit a bit further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
