In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality 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 ultimately user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s hands close to the beginning of faculty if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to 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 may need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales will depend on your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be better off should you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must be sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and may begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, should you wait to start advertising and marketing till you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow a minimum of a few additional weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing mission starts when you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability allow a little extra time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
