Door number one on a plethora of calendar styles has been eagerly opened across the country today, and this year has included a high profile new entrant with fashion magazine Vogue launching its first Beauty Advent Calendar, with a price tag of £350.
Stalwart Liberty London's high-end beauty calendar, described as “the original and best” has sold out, with the luxe store already offering customers advice on how to secure next year’s version.
Beauty Advent calendars remain hugely popular, and other Advent options seem to expand year on year to include beer, cocktails, pet treats, tea, Lego – and of course chocolate.
While many brands put up with the long lead times necessary when sourcing luxury packaging from the Far East, Pureprint head of luxury packaging Iain Moring said local sourcing was definitely moving up the agenda for some customers.
“There is a huge desire and a huge interest in moving production away from China and the Far East, firstly for environmental reasons, which is probably the biggest driving force, and the other is control,” he said.
“If you’re in the same time zone and country as the people who will be using it, it is much easier to prototype and produce something creative, and ensure that what you end up with is what you expected.”
Moring said Pureprint could work with lead times of just six-to-eight weeks and some projects had continued right up to the wire this year.
Jack Batey, director at Showcase Creative, commented: “We usually work on bespoke jobs that we are unable to talk about, however, we did work with Keenpac on the Beaverbrooks ‘Diamond a Day’ Calendar. That was a real beauty! It is a really fun market to work in but the briefs tend to be quite complex. We have developed some basic versions of luxury advent calendars that we can produce a lot more easily.
“There are some cool advent calendars about now. Personally I’m only happy if it has chocolate or gin in it!”
Matt Burgess, director at Reading-based Packaids which offers a range of specialist finishing services including for Advent calendars, said the firm had still been receiving printed sheets for Advent calendars right up until the last week of November, and quipped “I may have to glue the first two days shut at this rate!”
