In planning any calendar printing mission, 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, if your calendar isn’t in the long run consumer’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they might have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s arms near the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for your entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply have to ensure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to want and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and sell 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 depends on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or different occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you will be better off in case you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should allow a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you possibly can and will start advertising in the course of the planning and production phases of the challenge. Nonetheless, for those who wait to begin marketing until you have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than a couple of additional weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge starts when you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you talk 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 you probably have a particular deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable a bit further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
