In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run user’s palms before January 1, 2014, they might already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms near the start of faculty if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought 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 just must be sure to permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they may need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you want for gross sales depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area competition or different event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and should begin advertising and marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the venture. However, should you wait to begin advertising till you could have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to allow a minimum of a few additional weeks, possibly more, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing venture starts while you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow a little further time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
