In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not ultimately consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they might 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 user’s palms close to the start of faculty if it’s going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for all the venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it needs to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just make sure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and factor it in.
If, then again, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for gross sales depends upon your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at an area competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however keep in mind that you will be better off in case you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you count on. Or maybe you’re having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to permit no less than two weeks, and ideally as much as four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
If you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, it’s best to be sure to develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar venture – you’ll be able to and may start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing levels of the venture. However, for those who wait to start out advertising till you’ve the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at the very least a number of additional weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising message to succeed in the supposed viewers and encourage them to buy.
The production section of a calendar printing challenge begins once you hand off all the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. 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 finished product. Ensure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a particular deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should most likely enable slightly further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.