In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious reality to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar will not be ultimately person’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms near the beginning of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may need and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, both 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 gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be better off in case you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion will not be what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to enable no less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general period of the calendar venture – you can and may begin advertising through the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start advertising until you will have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the very least a couple of additional weeks, possibly more, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a specific deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable a bit extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for manufacturing.
