In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not ultimately user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s arms near the start of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for all the challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they’ll need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales is dependent upon your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you may be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to permit at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you must make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and should start marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing phases of the challenge. Nevertheless, for those who wait to start marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the very least a couple of further weeks, possibly more, on your advertising message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts once you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability allow somewhat extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
