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 a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the end consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they may already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s hands close to the start of school if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to 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 are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need 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 complicated. How much time you want for gross sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however understand that you will be higher off in the event you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to be sure you develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you may and may begin advertising throughout the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nonetheless, should you wait to begin marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit a minimum of a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising message to achieve the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking starts if you hand off all the images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit just a little additional time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
