In planning any calendar printing project, the most 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, if your calendar isn’t in the long run consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s hands near the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for the whole project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales relies on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off for those who can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you may and may start advertising in the course of the planning and production stages of the venture. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start out advertising and marketing until you have got the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the least a few extra weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended audience and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking begins once you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places 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’s often about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably enable just a little extra time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
