In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to concentrate 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 shouldn’t be in the end person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s arms close to the start of college if it’ll be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine 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 have to make sure you enable sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you may be better off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you must permit at least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you should make sure to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and should begin advertising and marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing stages of the mission. Nevertheless, should you wait to start advertising until you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow not less than a few extra weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising message to reach the supposed audience and motivate them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing project starts once you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. 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. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a particular deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to in all probability permit a bit of extra time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
