In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious truth 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 in the long run user’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the consumer’s palms close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a great timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’s going to most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will need and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for sales depends on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a local pageant or different occasion? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, however keep in mind that you may be better off for those who can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are not what you expect. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to permit at least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it is best to you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and may begin advertising and marketing through the planning and production levels of the challenge. Nonetheless, if you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you might have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at the very least a number of extra weeks, maybe extra, for your marketing message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing challenge begins when you hand off the entire images, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. 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. 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). For those who anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely allow just a little further time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
