In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar just isn’t ultimately user’s hands 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 must be within the person’s hands near the start of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to ensure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, 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 much time you want for gross sales relies on your sales technique. Are you selling at a local festival or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you’ll be better off if you happen to can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you count on. Or perhaps you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to allow at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to sell, it’s best to you should definitely develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and production levels of the undertaking. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start advertising and marketing until you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow no less than a few further weeks, maybe extra, in your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off the entire photos, text, logos, promoting, and many others. 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. Make sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should in all probability allow just a little further time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
