In planning any calendar printing mission, the 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 isn’t in the end consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s arms close to the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for your entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s palms? 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’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off in case you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should permit at least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you should make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you may and should begin advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the undertaking. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to start advertising till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least a couple of extra weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge starts when you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely permit slightly additional time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
