In planning any calendar printing undertaking, 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, if your calendar isn’t in the end user’s arms before January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the person’s hands near the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a good timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply must make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they will need and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How a lot time you need for gross sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a neighborhood pageant or other occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but remember the fact that you may be better off when you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event usually are not what you count on. Or possibly you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you should enable at the very least two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you plan to sell, you need to you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have to add to the general length of the calendar mission – you can and should begin marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the undertaking. Nevertheless, should you wait to start marketing until you could have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow not less than a couple of extra weeks, possibly extra, for your advertising message to reach the intended audience and inspire them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing project starts when you hand off all the photos, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts 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 often about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a selected deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely enable a little additional time – possibly a month in whole – for production.
