In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality 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 shouldn’t be in the end person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s hands close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or different occasion? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you’ll be better off in the event you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion should not what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to enable a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may start advertising and marketing through the planning and production levels of the venture. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to begin marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow no less than just a few extra weeks, maybe more, in your marketing message to reach the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing project begins once you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts 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 is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable a bit further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
