In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious fact 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 not ultimately person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands close to the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must make sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider 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 to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may 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 little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but needless to say you will be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you possibly can and will start advertising throughout the planning and production stages of the mission. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start out marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow not less than a few extra weeks, possibly more, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking begins once you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, 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. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability permit a bit extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
