In planning any calendar printing project, the most obvious truth to concentrate to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not ultimately person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could have already got found 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 college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you a superb timeline for your complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a local mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they are going to need and issue 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 want for sales relies on your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at an area pageant or other occasion? In that case, then that gives you a deadline, but needless to say you will be better off should you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one occasion will not be what you count on. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If that’s the case, it is best to permit at the very least two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to sell, you should you should definitely develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising and marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the overall length of the calendar mission – you possibly can and should begin marketing in the course of the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nonetheless, for those who wait to start out advertising till you will have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least just a few extra weeks, maybe more, in your advertising message to reach the intended audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing venture begins once you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, advertising, and so on. 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. Ensure you speak 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 particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely permit just a little extra time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
