In planning any calendar printing project, the 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 isn’t ultimately consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to be sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area competition or other event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must enable at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you may and will start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and production stages of the venture. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start out advertising and marketing till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, on your marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge starts while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, 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. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability enable a bit of further time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
