In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not ultimately user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers close to the start of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must make sure you allow 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 will in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be higher off when you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must permit no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and should start advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, in the event you wait to start out marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit at least a number of further weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and motivate them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing project starts once you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit a little bit extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
