In planning any calendar printing venture, 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 isn’t ultimately user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers near the beginning of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you may be better off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to permit no less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must remember to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and will begin advertising during the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, if you happen to wait to begin marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow not less than a few further weeks, maybe more, to your advertising message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge begins when you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts 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 (typically sooner when you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must most likely enable a bit of further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
