In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar shouldn’t be ultimately consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the person’s arms near the beginning of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply have to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it would in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot further time they will need and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you propose to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales depends upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you may be better off should you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must permit a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to you’ll want to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will start advertising in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the challenge. However, if you wait to begin marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the very least just a few further weeks, perhaps more, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing mission starts if you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably allow a little bit extra time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
