In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to pay attention 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 isn’t in the end consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms near the start of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales depends on your sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be higher off should you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you can and should begin advertising in the course of the planning and production phases of the mission. However, should you wait to start out marketing till you will have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a number of extra weeks, maybe extra, on your advertising message to achieve the meant audience and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking begins while you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. 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. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability permit slightly further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
