In planning any calendar printing project, 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 just isn’t ultimately consumer’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s hands close to the start of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just have to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, but remember that you may be better off in the event you can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you count on. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must allow at the least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you can and may begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to begin advertising and marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at the very least a couple of extra weeks, possibly more, on your marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing undertaking begins when you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability enable a little bit additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
