In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to concentrate 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 will not be in the end person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s palms near the beginning of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood pageant or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but take into account that you will be better off if you happen to can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow no less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you can and should begin marketing in the course of the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, should you wait to start marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow a minimum of a number of extra weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing undertaking starts once you hand off all the images, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (generally sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you need to probably enable a bit further time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
