In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to pay attention 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 is just not in the end consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms near the start of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your entire venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to 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 venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however understand that you’ll be higher off if you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should allow not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you need to make sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and will start advertising through the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. However, in the event you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit a minimum of a number of further weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability allow a bit of additional time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
