In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to concentrate 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 shouldn’t be in the long run user’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the person’s palms near the start of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your entire undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s arms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to ensure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much further time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, then again, you plan 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 a neighborhood competition or different event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, but understand that you’ll be better off in case you can sell at multiple occasions, in case attendance or gross sales at one event aren’t what you count on. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit at least two weeks, and preferably as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall period of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and will start marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nevertheless, if you happen to wait to start out marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than a number of extra weeks, perhaps extra, for your advertising message to succeed in the meant audience and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing mission starts whenever you hand off the entire photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed 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 (generally sooner you probably have a specific deadline). For those who anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability allow slightly further time – possibly a month in complete – for manufacturing.
