In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth 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 just isn’t ultimately consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s palms near the start of faculty if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for your complete challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to determine 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 must be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it’ll probably be cheaper and easier for you. Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they are going to need and issue it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you want for gross sales depends upon your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you’ll be higher off when you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you should enable not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to sell, it is best to make sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and may start marketing during the planning and production stages of the project. Nevertheless, when you wait to start out advertising and marketing until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will have to allow at least a couple of extra weeks, possibly more, for your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and inspire them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge starts while you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work for you to approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you speak 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 when you’ve got a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably allow a bit of additional time – perhaps a month in total – for manufacturing.
