In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the end person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s palms close to the beginning of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to be sure to permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will 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 want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or different event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you expect. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to make sure to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you may and should start advertising and marketing during the planning and production stages of the mission. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow not less than a few additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising message to succeed in the meant audience and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing mission begins when you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then 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 long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably enable slightly additional time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
