In planning any calendar printing project, 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, in case your calendar will not be in the long run person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s palms near the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for your entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales will depend on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off should you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must enable a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you should make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and may start marketing during the planning and production stages of the undertaking. Nonetheless, when you wait to start out marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the least just a few extra weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and motivate them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a bit extra time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
