Advent Calendar.

Each door is a die-cut hinged flap, perforated on three sides and scored on the fourth so it opens once and stays attached. The die is tooled to your artwork, and every one of the 24 flaps has to line up with its cavity behind. If the die drifts even slightly against the print, the door opens onto the wrong picture or tears the panel behind it.

We treat door-to-cavity alignment as the pass or fail test on this job, and we check it on a press proof before the run.

A backing board behind the printed face keeps the calendar flat through December. The face itself is folding boxboard carrying the doors, and on its own a sheet with 24 perforated flaps will bow and let the doors lift early. Bonding it to a rigid backing removes that problem.

On the premium tier the whole build moves to rigid board, which is what we use for drawer-format calendars meant to be refilled the following year.

Yes, anything with contents needs a tray, and for confectionery we use a vacuum-formed 24-cavity food-safe tray. The printed board is secondary packaging in that build, and the tray is the food-contact layer. For beauty samples or toys the cavities are cut to the actual items, because those vary far more in shape than a chocolate does, and we size them from the real products rather than a drawing.

Full CMYK with a hot foil accent is the standard seasonal combination. Matt lamination gives foil and spot detail a base to sit on, while gloss lamination suits bright retail artwork that will be handled on a shelf. If you want sparkle, we print a glitter-effect ink rather than applying loose glitter, which a growing number of retailers now refuse.

One thing we check on every proof is door numbering, since misnumbered artwork is a surprisingly common error.

The two sizes we build most are 12 × 16 × 1.5 inches and 14 × 18 × 2 inches, both with 24 doors. Depth is set by the tray, so a chocolate version sits at the shallow end and a beauty calendar with taller items needs the 2 inch build. We measure the outer face length by width, then the depth of the cavity behind it.

We start at 500 calendars per design. The die tooling for 24 doors is the main setup cost, and 500 is where that tooling stops dominating the unit price. Pricing tiers step down again above 1,000, and we can run up to 100,000 on one order for larger retail programmes.

Spring, honestly, because seasonal capacity books up and a calendar delivered late is worth nothing. Standard production runs 7 to 10 business days once artwork is approved, with a 5 to 7 business day rush where the schedule allows it. A sample takes 5 to 7 business days and we would always build one before a filled run.

The sample fee comes off your production invoice.

Yes, the drawer format on rigid board is built for exactly that. Instead of perforated doors that open once, numbered drawers slide out and back in, so the calendar is refilled the following year. It costs more per unit than a boxboard face, but a calendar that is kept holds your branding on a shelf for years, which usually justifies the better print.