In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not ultimately person’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s arms close to the beginning of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for all the challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, however, 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 complicated. How a lot time you need for sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be better off for those who can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and may start advertising and marketing during the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start out advertising until you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow at the least a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, to your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project begins if you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak 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 specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow a little extra time – maybe a month in complete – for manufacturing.
