In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not ultimately person’s hands earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s fingers close to the beginning of college if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you an excellent timeline for all the challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s arms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply must make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be higher off if you happen to can sell at a number of events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion usually are not what you anticipate. Or possibly you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you should remember to develop and implement a strong advertising plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar undertaking – you may and should start advertising during the planning and manufacturing stages of the project. Nonetheless, in the event you wait to begin advertising and marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit no less than a few further weeks, maybe more, in your marketing message to achieve the meant viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge begins while you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (typically sooner in case you have a specific deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely enable a little bit extra time – possibly a month in total – for manufacturing.
