In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious truth to pay attention to is that each calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar is just not ultimately person’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they may already have discovered another. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s arms close to the start of college if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a superb timeline for your complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you simply need to be sure you allow sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How a lot time you want for gross sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at an area festival or different event? In that case, then that offers you a deadline, however take into account that you’ll be better off should you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event will not be what you count on. Or maybe you might be having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, you need to allow a minimum of two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to you should definitely develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the general duration of the calendar mission – you can and may start advertising and marketing during the planning and manufacturing stages of the undertaking. However, for those who wait to start out marketing until you may have the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the least a couple of further weeks, perhaps more, in your marketing message to reach the intended viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing challenge begins whenever you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings for you to approve after which puts 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 (generally sooner you probably have a selected deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you must probably allow just a little further time – maybe a month in whole – for manufacturing.
