In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the end person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s arms near the beginning of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however understand that you may be better off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you may and will start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start advertising and marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the very least just a few additional weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising message to achieve the intended audience and motivate them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off all the photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely enable a little additional time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
