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 the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be in the long run consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s arms close to the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be 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, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want 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 difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you will be higher off if you happen to can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you need to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you may and should start advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production stages of the mission. However, if you wait to start marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit a minimum of a couple of extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off all of the images, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. 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 finished product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow slightly extra time – possibly a month in total – for production.
