In planning any calendar printing mission, the 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 shouldn’t be in the end user’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s palms near the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply must be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you will be higher off in case you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you must allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to be sure you develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar project – you possibly can and will begin marketing during the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start advertising until you have got the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than just a few further weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising message to achieve the meant audience and motivate them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off all the photos, text, logos, promoting, and many others. 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 completed product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability permit slightly further time – possibly a month in total – for production.
