In planning any calendar printing challenge, 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, if your calendar will not be in the long run user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the user’s arms near the start of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to ensure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember the fact that you will be better off if you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable no less than 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.
If you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should be sure you develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you may and will start marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. Nonetheless, if you wait to start out marketing till you might have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit no less than just a few extra weeks, maybe more, in your marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing mission starts once you hand off all the photos, text, logos, advertising, and so on. 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 completed product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability permit a little bit extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
