The lead time for a Christmas gift is not a single number but a chain: design, approval, production, packing and only then delivery. Once you know the order these steps come in and where they usually stall, you can work out for yourself in which week your enquiry should reach us. Let us walk through that chain backwards — from the day the gift is handed over back towards the start.
Start at the end: what date is your real deadline
Most companies begin planning with the question “what shall we give this year”. In practice you get there faster with the question “on what day does the gift have to be in the recipient’s hands”. Those two dates are not the same thing, and sometimes they are weeks apart.
Write down which of these applies in your case:
- The Christmas party or a shared lunch — the gifts have to be there a full day earlier, not on the same morning.
- The last working day before the holidays — if the gift is handed over at the office, that is your deadline.
- Posted out to clients — then you need the gifts far enough in advance to pack them into envelopes or parcels yourself and send them out.
- Several offices or branches — the goods arrive in one place but have to reach several; that redistribution takes days of its own that nobody plans for.
- Client visits — if a salesperson delivers the gifts in person, the handout starts earlier than the party.
Everything that follows is counted back from that date.
The four links in the chain
The journey of every logo gift looks much the same, whether it is a growing kit, a seed paper card or something made of wood.
- Design. Your logo is placed on the surface of the product and you see how it will actually come out. The first digital design proof is free and without obligation, and it is ready within one day. This is the fastest link in the chain — and therefore also the silliest place to lose time.
- Approval. Someone in your company has to say “yes, that is right”. This link does not depend on us at all, and this is exactly where the timeline slips most often.
- Production and printing. The approved design goes to print or to engraving, the products are personalised and packed. We fulfil orders within up to 10 working days.
- Delivery. The finished goods travel to you. How long that takes depends on the quantity, the destination and whether the consignment goes to one address or to several.
The only number we can write down here is the production side: up to 10 working days. The whole rest of the chain — when the design is approved, how large the quantity is, where it goes — differs with every order, which is why you always get the exact lead time with a specific quote, not as a general promise on a website.
Where the timeline actually breaks
Experience says that delays do not come from production. They come from these places:
- Approval is left hanging. The proof has been sent, but the decision-maker is on holiday or waiting for the board’s opinion. The proof is ready in a day; the answer comes two weeks later.
- The logo is not in a usable file. A screenshot from the website or a small PNG is not a print file. The hunt for a vector file usually begins once everything else has already been decided.
- The quantity changes halfway through. “Let us make twice as many after all” is not a harmless change — it can alter both the printing technique and the price, and it means another round of approval.
- Addresses and distribution are still open. The goods are ready, but nobody knows how many boxes go to Tartu and how many to Pärnu.
- The decision is made in December. December is the only month when everybody does the same thing at once. The same order that is relaxed in October is tight in December.
Quantity and printing technique decide what is possible at all
The way you personalise is not only a matter of taste — some techniques are tied to a minimum quantity, and that directly affects what can be offered to you in the first place. Our products list two such thresholds: full-colour printing on the box from 500 pieces and direct printing on the cup from 1000 pieces.
If your quantity falls below that, it does not mean the logo cannot go on. It means the logo goes on differently. We also use full-colour printing on eco paper or kraft paper, engraving on wood and on pencils, labels and box sleeves. With a smaller quantity these are exactly the solutions that work — and the sooner you tell us the order of magnitude of the quantity, the sooner the design can get onto the right track.
The practical conclusion: the quantity should be decided before the design, not after it. In the opposite order you do the same work twice.
Living goods and shelf goods behave differently
There are two different characters among gifts, and they need different timelines.
Growing kits are shelf goods in the most convenient sense: a sealed kit keeps on the shelf for up to several years and the process only starts once the recipient opens the box and adds water. That means you can safely order this kind of gift earlier and put it in the warehouse or a cupboard — nothing spoils or dries out. Every kit contains several seeds and a short set of instructions under the lid, so the recipient does not have to look anything up.
If the point of the gift is that the person sees a result during the holidays, allow for germination as well: it takes from a few days up to about twenty days, and herbs such as thyme are the fastest. The day the gift is received and the day “something happens” are two different dates.
A spruce with a logo and other live plants are a different story — they are seasonal goods and cannot be put into storage a month in advance. If your plan includes a live plant, the ordering window is narrower than it is for a printed box, and that is worth allowing for while you are still thinking it through, not only when you ask for a quote.
What you can get done before the decision
These things can be prepared even when you do not yet know exactly what you will order. Every point here shortens the chain later on:
- The logo in a vector file, in one place, available even when the marketing person is on holiday.
- The order of magnitude of the quantity — not an exact number, but a range.
- An approver agreed by name: the person who says yes to the design.
- The delivery address or addresses, and the split between them.
- The decision on whether the gift is handed over, posted or delivered in person.
Once those five things are in place, the whole rest of the process is essentially technical.
Our sales are enquiry-based: there are no prices on the site, because the price depends on the quantity and the printing method. The same logic applies to the lead time — a date anyone can genuinely stand behind can only be set once the product, the quantity and the personalisation are known. If your Christmas deadline is already in the calendar, send us an enquiry and we will count the timeline back from that date. The first design proof is free and without obligation, so getting started does not require a decision from you. The most common questions about quantities, printing and products are answered on the questions and answers page.