Parcels staying within the same state get one more day, to Tuesday 22 December.
Express Post between metro addresses buys a little more time. It closes on Wednesday 23 December for most of the country, and a day earlier for items sent from Western Australia or to the Northern Territory.
Parcel Post to and from Western Australia and the Northern Territory closes first, between 14 and 18 December depending on the route. Anything lodged over the counter has to be in by 2.30pm on the cut-off day, according to Australia Post.
That covers only the last leg. Before a single gift reaches the post office, a promotional order has to clear a quote and a proof, then sit in production and travel from the supplier to the buyer’s office. A supplier’s headline turnaround usually describes the production part alone.
Staff gifts carry a tax question too. The Australian Taxation Office treats a Christmas gift that is not entertainment, worth less than A$300 per employee, as a minor benefit that is generally exempt from fringe benefits tax. Branded drinkware and most apparel sit well under that line.
Production lead times
The production clock usually starts on the day artwork is approved, not the day the order goes in. Most suppliers count it in working days. An order placed on a Monday with a proof signed off on Thursday has lost half a week before anything is printed, and freight to the office comes on top.
Workwear takes longer to set up than drinkware. Polos and hi-vis need a size for every staff member before production can begin, and chasing sizes from several sites in late November often takes longer than the embroidery.
Where the blank stock sits matters. A product held in Australia can go straight to decoration. One imported to order adds weeks of shipping that a December deadline cannot absorb, so confirm the stock location before choosing the item.
Faster options exist on some lines. Certain suppliers run 24-hour or 3-day production on selected products. These rarely cover the whole catalogue, and the express price may not include express freight.
Proof approval
Before anything is printed, most suppliers send a digital proof or mockup showing where the logo sits and what colour it will be. Confirm in writing that production waits for approval.
Colour is where proofs catch most problems. Specify brand colours by Pantone reference where the print method allows, and use the light version of the logo on dark garments. Hi-vis has its own rule: the logo cannot cover the reflective tape.
Every round of changes resets approval.
The production start moves back by however long the reply takes. In the first week of December that can mean several days while artwork passes between marketing and the office manager. Naming one approver, with a date to sign off by, avoids most of that delay.
Setup fees and minimum orders
On a small gifting run, two charges move the unit price more than the print does: the setup fee and the minimum order quantity.
A setup fee normally pays for screens in screen printing or for digitising a logo for embroidery. Some suppliers charge it per colour or per print position. A two-colour logo on the front and back of a polo can attract more than one fee, and spread across 50 units that can add more to each shirt than the decoration itself.
Not every supplier charges one. Brand Surge, an Australian supplier of custom branded products and workwear, states on its site that it charges no setup fees and lists the minimum order quantity on each product page. Elsewhere the figures may only appear on a formal quote. Get both numbers on paper before the proof is signed.
Minimums differ by product and by decoration method. For apparel, check whether mixed sizes and colours of one garment count towards the same minimum. That decides whether a small team can order two colours without falling short.
What’s next
Count back from 21 December. Take off the days needed to repack and post gifts in-house, along with the supplier’s freight time to the office. Then subtract the production days, plus two or three days for proof changes. For standard lines that puts the latest safe order date in the second half of November, a few weeks from now.
Supplier cut-offs often come before Australia Post’s. Many promotional warehouses close over the break, and some stop taking Christmas orders in early December.
Delivery addresses can undo an order at the final step. Plenty of offices shut between Christmas and New Year. A parcel that reaches a locked building on 24 December is likely to go back to the depot until January.
Reorders are the other thing to raise now. A business planning to kit out new starters in February can ask whether the setup work is kept on file, so the second run does not start from scratch.