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, in case your calendar is just not in the long run consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s palms near the beginning of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a very good timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide 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 must be sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and promote 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 upon your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be higher off for those who can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you anticipate. Or possibly you are having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you must enable at the very least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you 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 period of the calendar challenge – you’ll be able to and may start advertising during the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. Nevertheless, if you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, perhaps more, to your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing mission starts when you hand off all the images, text, logos, promoting, 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. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (sometimes sooner when you’ve got a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow somewhat additional time – maybe a month in total – for production.
