In planning any calendar printing project, the most 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, if your calendar is not in the long run consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s arms close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for the complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively 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 clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they may want and factor it in.
If, however, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How much time you need for sales is determined by your sales technique. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be better off in the event you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must enable at least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you must be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar venture – you possibly can and may start advertising during the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. However, when you wait to start advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least just a few further weeks, maybe extra, for your marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing undertaking starts once you hand off the entire pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner in case you have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely enable a bit further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
