In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious reality to concentrate 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 just not in the long run consumer’s hands before January 1, 2014, they may have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s hands close to the start of faculty if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you an excellent timeline for the complete undertaking.
How are you getting your calendars into the tip consumer’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you are mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must make sure you permit sufficient time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should most likely be cheaper and simpler for you. Just ensure you 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 sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making enterprise, then distribution is a bit more difficult. How a lot time you need for gross sales is determined by your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at an area competition or different event? If that’s the case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you will be higher off when you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion will not be what you count on. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. In that case, it is best to allow a minimum of two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and a few will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you should be sure to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have so as to add to the general period of the calendar undertaking – you’ll be able to and may start advertising through the planning and production stages of the undertaking. However, when you wait to start marketing until you’ve the calendars in hand, then you have to to permit at the least just a few further weeks, perhaps more, for your advertising and marketing message to achieve the intended audience and encourage them to purchase.
The production part of a calendar printing mission starts once you hand off all of the pictures, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the completed product. Ensure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (generally sooner in case you have a specific deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it is best to most likely allow just a little further time – perhaps a month in complete – for production.
