In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious reality to concentrate 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 isn’t in the end person’s arms earlier than 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 needs to be within the user’s palms close to the beginning of college if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a very good timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip user’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will need and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you want for sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be better off should you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you must enable at least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar project – you can and will begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the undertaking. Nevertheless, when you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you will need to permit at least a couple of extra weeks, maybe more, for your advertising message to reach the meant viewers and motivate them to buy.
The manufacturing section of a calendar printing mission starts while you hand off all of the pictures, textual content, logos, advertising, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure to 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 in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely allow a bit of further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
