In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the obvious truth to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not ultimately consumer’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the consumer’s palms near the start of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for all the mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip person’s fingers? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must be sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to probably be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and factor it in.
If, then again, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How a lot time you need for sales is dependent upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember the fact that you’ll be higher off in the event you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must enable no less than two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you need to make sure to develop and implement a stable marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you possibly can and will begin advertising throughout the planning and production stages of the challenge. Nonetheless, for those who wait to begin marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow no less than a few further weeks, perhaps extra, to your advertising message to achieve the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The production phase of a calendar printing project begins if you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then 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 lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a particular deadline). In the event you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should probably enable just a little additional time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
