In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact 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 in the end consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could already have discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the person’s hands near the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for your entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s arms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or perhaps you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just must be sure to allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it can in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Just ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll want and factor it in.
If, however, you intend to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales relies on your sales strategy. Are you selling at a local pageant or different occasion? If so, then that gives you a deadline, however remember that you’ll be better off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or gross sales at one event are usually not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, you must permit at the very least two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, you need to make sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and may begin marketing during the planning and manufacturing levels of the project. Nevertheless, should you wait to begin marketing till you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you will want to permit at least a couple of additional weeks, perhaps extra, in your marketing message to reach the intended viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The production section of a calendar printing project starts whenever you hand off the entire photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so forth. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (generally sooner when you have a selected deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you need to most likely allow a little bit extra time – perhaps a month in total – for production.
