In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t ultimately consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s arms near the beginning of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, however, 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 sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local competition or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but understand that you will be higher off in case you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you may and may begin advertising during the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start out advertising and marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the least just a few further weeks, possibly more, on your marketing message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking begins if you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. 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 is normally about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow a little bit further time – possibly a month in total – for production.
