In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to concentrate 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 in the end user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’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 timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide 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 be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they may want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you may be better off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must permit at least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you may and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than a couple of extra weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts when you hand off the entire pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places 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’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit a bit further time – possibly a month in complete – for production.
