In planning any calendar printing challenge, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar isn’t in the long run person’s palms before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s fingers close to the beginning of college if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can provide you an excellent timeline for your complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just need to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it is going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply be sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, 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 want for gross sales depends upon your gross sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If so, then that offers you a deadline, but needless to say you’ll be higher off in the event you can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. If so, it’s best to enable at least two weeks, and ideally up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their very own different schedules, and some will want reminders and encouragement.
Should you print a calendar that you just plan to promote, you should you’ll want to develop and implement a strong advertising and marketing plan. Advertising doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar project – you may and may start marketing through the planning and manufacturing phases of the challenge. Nevertheless, in the event you wait to start out advertising until you may have the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow not less than a few extra weeks, possibly extra, to your advertising message to succeed in the intended audience and inspire them to purchase.
The production phase of a calendar printing undertaking starts while you hand off all of the photographs, text, logos, advertising, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Be sure 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 (sometimes sooner when you have a specific deadline). If you happen to anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably permit slightly further time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
