In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not ultimately consumer’s arms before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s palms close to the start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they may need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you may be higher off in the event you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you need to enable at the least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will start advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nonetheless, should you wait to start advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at least a few extra weeks, possibly more, to your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing undertaking begins whenever you hand off all the pictures, 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 finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable a little further time – maybe a month in total – for production.
