In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the long run consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s fingers close to the start of school if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out 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 customers or members; in that case you simply have to be sure you allow 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’ll probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will want and issue it in.
If, however, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you need for gross sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be better off when you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you expect. Or perhaps you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you must enable at the least two weeks, and ideally as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it is best to make sure you develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you possibly can and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. However, for those who wait to start marketing till you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at least a couple of additional weeks, perhaps extra, on your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the supposed audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing venture starts if you hand off all the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable just a little extra time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
