Julian Date Tomorrow

In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious reality to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar isn’t ultimately person’s arms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s palms near the beginning of faculty if it will be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the whole undertaking.

How are you getting your calendars into the end consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will need 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 ensure you enable enough 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 can most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure to find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will need and issue it in.

If, however, you intend 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 a lot time you want for gross sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or other occasion? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but needless to say you’ll be higher off in case you can promote at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event aren’t what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it is best to enable at least two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.

If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to promote, you must you’ll want to develop and implement a strong marketing plan. Advertising and marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar undertaking – you possibly can and will begin advertising in the course of the planning and production levels of the project. Nonetheless, if you wait to begin marketing until you will have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow not less than a number of further weeks, possibly more, on your marketing message to achieve the supposed viewers and motivate them to purchase.

The production section of a calendar printing mission begins whenever you hand off all of the photos, textual content, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Ensure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s normally about three weeks (typically sooner if you have a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it is best to in all probability permit just a little extra time – possibly a month in whole – for production.