In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the long run person’s arms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands close to the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may want and factor it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or different occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you will be better off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it is best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to start marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the very least a number of further weeks, maybe extra, to your marketing message to achieve the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing mission starts once you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a bit of further time – possibly a month in whole – for manufacturing.
