In planning any calendar printing mission, the most obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is not in the end person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s arms near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a great timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they will need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local pageant or other event? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be higher off should you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to allow no less than two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you must remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and may begin marketing during the planning and production levels of the venture. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to start advertising and marketing till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit not less than a number of further weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing challenge starts while you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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 finished product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability permit just a little additional time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
