In planning any calendar printing mission, 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 long run person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they might already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s palms near the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be better off if you happen to can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit no less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you can and will begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at least a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed audience and inspire them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking begins whenever you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit slightly further time – maybe a month in total – for production.
