In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s arms close to the beginning of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, 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 might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll want and issue 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 bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however needless to say you may be better off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must be sure you develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar project – you may and will start marketing during the planning and production stages of the challenge. However, when you wait to begin advertising until you could have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the least a few additional weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising message to reach the intended viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project starts if you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must probably allow just a little extra time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
