In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s fingers close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they may need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area festival or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however needless to say you may be better off when you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and production phases of the venture. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the very least a number of further weeks, possibly more, to your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. 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. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability allow somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
