In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t in the long run person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off should you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one event should not what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit not less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to be sure to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may begin marketing in the course of the planning and production phases of the venture. Nevertheless, when you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will want to allow at least a few additional weeks, possibly more, on your marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing challenge begins whenever you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably allow a bit further time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
