In planning any calendar printing mission, the obvious fact 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 isn’t in the end user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s palms near the beginning of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a very good timeline for all the undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’ll most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for gross sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be higher off when you can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion usually are not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar project – you’ll be able to and should begin marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the venture. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit not less than a few extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising and marketing message to succeed in the intended audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing challenge starts when you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, promoting, etc. 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 completed product. Make sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner if in case you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must in all probability enable a bit extra time – maybe a month in whole – for production.
