In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality 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 not in the long run consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers near the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be better off if you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must allow at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should remember to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing phases of the project. However, in case you wait to start out advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at least a couple of extra weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the intended viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts once you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to 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 in case you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability enable a little bit further time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.