In planning any calendar printing project, the most 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, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s fingers close to the start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales will depend on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you’ll be higher off if you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it’s best to enable at the least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and should begin advertising throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the challenge. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start marketing till you have got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the least a couple of extra weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing venture begins when you hand off all of the photos, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable a bit additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
