In planning any calendar printing venture, the most obvious truth to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t ultimately person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they might have already got discovered an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be in the consumer’s palms near the beginning of school if it will be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for your complete project.
How are you getting your calendars into the top consumer’s hands? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you permit enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or take into account 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. Just ensure you discover out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot extra time they are going to want and issue it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a little more difficult. How much time you need for sales is determined by your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood competition or other occasion? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember that you will be better off in case you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you expect. Or perhaps you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit no less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you simply plan to promote, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have so as to add to the general length of the calendar challenge – you possibly can and may start marketing during the planning and production phases of the challenge. Nonetheless, when you wait to start advertising until you’ve got the calendars in hand, then you have to to allow no less than a number of additional weeks, maybe extra, to your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and inspire them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts if you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, advertising, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can 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 lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (typically sooner when you have a specific deadline). When you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to most likely permit a little additional time – maybe a month in complete – for production.
