In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the end person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s hands close to the start of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just must be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend 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 much time you need for gross sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you may be higher off in the event you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable at the least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it’s best to make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and will begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, if you happen to wait to start out advertising until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow no less than a number of further weeks, maybe extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you discuss 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 if in case you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow somewhat additional time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
