In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that each 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 fingers 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 within the person’s palms near the start of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for all the 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 must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales relies on your sales technique. Are you promoting at an area competition or different event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however needless to say you will be better off if you happen to can sell at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are not what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to permit a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to remember to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will start marketing throughout the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to start advertising until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will have to permit not less than a couple of extra weeks, possibly extra, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner when you have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit slightly additional time – maybe a month in total – for manufacturing.
