In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to concentrate to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is not in the long run user’s hands before January 1, 2014, they could have already got found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be within the user’s fingers near the start of faculty if it’s going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the complete venture.
How are you getting your calendars into the top person’s palms? Are you giving them away? In that case, then it must be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you’ll need to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you’re mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you simply need to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it will in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply ensure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they will want and factor it in.
If, alternatively, you plan to print a calendar and promote it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more sophisticated. How much time you need for sales will depend on your gross sales technique. Are you selling at a neighborhood festival or other event? If that’s the case, then that gives you a deadline, but remember that you will be better off in case you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion should not what you anticipate. Or perhaps you might be having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to permit not less than two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
In the event you print a calendar that you plan to promote, you must make sure you develop and implement a solid advertising and marketing plan. Advertising does not have so as to add to the overall duration of the calendar venture – you possibly can and may start advertising throughout the planning and production phases of the challenge. Nonetheless, if you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit no less than a number of additional weeks, perhaps more, to your marketing message to reach the meant audience and inspire them to buy.
The production part of a calendar printing project starts while you hand off all of the images, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you discuss to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is normally about three weeks (typically sooner when you’ve got a specific deadline). If you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you can be proofing by committee, then you should probably enable a little bit extra time – perhaps a month in complete – for manufacturing.
