In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious reality 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 is not in the end person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s arms near the beginning of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for the entire mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to ensure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you want for gross sales is dependent upon your sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local festival or other event? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, however understand that you may be better off should you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you should enable at the least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising does not have to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you can and should start advertising through the planning and production phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, in case you wait to start advertising and marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit not less than a couple of extra weeks, perhaps more, on your marketing message to succeed in the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing mission begins whenever you hand off the entire photographs, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to discuss to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner if in case you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability allow a bit of additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
