In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s fingers near the start of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you intend 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 a lot time you need for gross sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to allow at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to remember to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar mission – you can and will begin advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising till you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit not less than a couple of extra weeks, perhaps more, in your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission starts when you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. 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 speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you must probably permit a little additional time – possibly a month in total – for production.
