In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t ultimately person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s fingers near the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must be sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be higher off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you need to be sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you can and will start marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. However, if you wait to begin marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the very least a few further weeks, maybe more, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing project begins whenever you hand off the entire images, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability enable a little extra time – maybe a month in total – for production.
