In planning any calendar printing mission, 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 isn’t in the end consumer’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s arms near the beginning of school if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, however, 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 sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember that you may be higher off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you need to permit not less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, it is best to remember to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you can and may begin advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing stages of the challenge. However, when you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit no less than a number of extra weeks, possibly more, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing undertaking begins if you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk 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 you probably have a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability enable slightly additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
