In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not ultimately person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s hands near the start of school if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for gross sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you’ll be better off for those who can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or maybe you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should enable at the least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must remember to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and may begin advertising during the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, if you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at the very least just a few extra weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge begins when you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, advertising, etc. 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 completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely permit somewhat extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
