In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not in the end user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s fingers close to the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you selling at an area competition or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you may be better off in case you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to allow not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you need to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar mission – you possibly can and will start marketing throughout the planning and production phases of the mission. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start advertising till you might have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the least just a few additional weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing project begins while you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must probably allow slightly additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
