In planning any calendar printing project, the 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, in case your calendar is just not ultimately user’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms near the beginning of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a good timeline for the whole venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, 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 sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you selling at a local pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember that you will be better off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you must remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar challenge – you can and should begin advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the mission. However, if you happen to wait to start advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow not less than just a few further weeks, maybe extra, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the intended audience and motivate them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing mission begins if you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork 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 is usually about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability permit a bit further time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
