Time Slot Chart

In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be useful 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 tip consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need 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 handle mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and issue it in.

If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both 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 depends upon your sales technique. Are you selling at a local competition or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event usually are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable at the least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.

In case you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and may begin marketing throughout the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start advertising until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit no less than a few additional weeks, possibly more, in your advertising and marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.

The manufacturing part of a calendar printing undertaking begins while you hand off all the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you speak 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 when you have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow a little bit further time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.