In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the 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, if your calendar isn’t ultimately consumer’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s hands near the start of faculty if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for the entire project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure to allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, 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 complicated. How much time you need for gross sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you selling at an area festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that offers you a deadline, but remember that you may be higher off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you should allow at least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In case you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you must be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general duration of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and should begin marketing through the planning and production stages of the mission. However, if you happen to wait to start out marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at least a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing mission begins while you hand off all the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner you probably have a selected deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you should probably permit just a little additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
