In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar isn’t in the long run person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s palms close to the beginning of school if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should 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 clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both 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 will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember that you may be better off for those who can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you expect. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to allow at least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will begin advertising during the planning and production levels of the mission. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the least a few additional weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising message to reach the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should most likely enable a little additional time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
