In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the long run person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s arms near the beginning of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should 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 might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll want and factor 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 difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you may be better off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should remember to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and may begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the venture. Nonetheless, if you wait to begin marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow a minimum of just a few additional weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge starts while you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. 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. 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 (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow a little bit additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
