Xmas Mailing Dates NZ 2018

From early November until Christmas is the busiest time of the year sales wise for NZ Fine Prints. Art prints are perennially popular Xmas gifts and making sure we deliver on time for Xmas around the world and throughout NZ has been something we have been doing for 52 years!!

Christmas on a Tuesday is a bit awkward delivery wise.  This year our cut off date for NZ wide delivery by Xmas day is way back on Friday 21st December - so we'll be promoting the gift certificates over that last weekend (Christchurch customers can come and pick up right through to Xmas Eve though).

Official mailing dates are below, these apply to our standard delivery service. There may be other delivery options available outside of our standard service/pricing so if you think you are running out of time please call us on 0800 800 278 in the lead up to Xmas, we may be able to work something out for you.

NZ Fine Prints Christmas Mailing Dates for 2018 are as follows:

Delivery worldwide at our standard rate of just $NZ15 (for any number of prints):

Australia

Please order your gifts by Wednesday 5th December 2018

UK & Europe, East Asia, North America & South Pacific

Please order your gifts by Monday 3 December 2018

Rest of World

Order Xmas gifts by Friday 30th November 2018

Xmas Delivery to NZ Addresses

Standard Delivery for $NZ6 (for any number of prints)

We need to have your orders for prints being delivered as gifts for Xmas by 3pm Thursday 20th December 2018

Deadline for next day courier delivery via CourierPost with guaranteed delivery for Xmas day is 3pm Friday 21st December 2018

Framed Prints - please order 10 working days before these mailing dates to ensure we can deliver by Christmas.

Gift Vouchers

NZ Prints also deliver gift vouchers by mail to NZ addresses if ordered by 21st December - and email gift vouchers are even being purchased on Xmas day itself and delivered instantly around the world. Now that is last second Christmas shopping!

Shipping & Delivery Updates

As we get closer to Xmas we will update any delays or known issues with Xmas delivery on our shipping & delivery page.

Print sales to the UK & US markets changed over Xmas 2016

Our analytics maven pointed out something interesting to us recently.  NZ Fine Prints' revenue from sales into two traditionally strong markets - the United States and the United Kingdom - dropped over the Xmas period 2016 compared to 2015.  This was hidden in our overall figures as sales domestically grew year on year, we hadn't noticed this decline and had been patting ourselves on the back for another Xmas better than the previous one! (The other top overseas destination for NZ prints (Australia) was flat, just a couple of percentage points higher than last year).

As any business owner knows a drop in sales is both alarming and a signal of something - but understanding why a businesses sales into a particular market dropped is a puzzle.

Initially we assumed that political uncertainty (election of Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK) could be the biggest factor in this decline, it's a sentiment that would be hard to measure of course but intuitively when the financial outlook is less clear making the decision not to buy a non-essential item such as an artwork might be a logical response.  The ongoing strength of the NZ dollar against the pound was brought up in our meeting, but the $US has been rising against the $NZ so relative currency strength probably wouldn't be a factor in both of these markets declining at the same time.

But then our analytics revealed something else that neatly fits another theory, not sure how we can test the validity of this without a survey of our customers but bear with me...

We were surprised to note that the total number of transactions had not fallen, and a similar number of prints were bought in an average sale - it was the average value of each sale (ie the cost of each print purchased) that had dropped.

Native Birds poster $NZ 39.95

Our theory:  we are wondering if kiwis living in these two countries are buying a less expensive poster (such as the top selling Native Birds of NZ poster at just $39.95) as a short term reminder of home, wall art that isn't meant to be on the wall for the rest of their lives.  It's an inexpensive large artwork that can even just be pinned on the wall, more temporary and less expensive to display than a framed print.  

Previously an edition by a top shelf NZ artist like Dick Frizzell - one of his tiki series for instance like the "1938 Tiki" pictured below which start at 20x the price of the bird poster even for a small work- was a more typical purchase.  This is an artwork you would buy to have a lasting memento of Aotearoa to treasure for the long haul - perhaps if you did not have any inkling that maybe one day you would be returning home to NZ to live.

D. Frizzell "1938 Tiki" $NZ 650 

Is this change in preference for the temporary decoration over the long-lasting taonga an indication that kiwi immigrants to these countries are feeling less certain about their long term prospects?

And is this an indicator that perhaps even more kiwis are actually planning to be returning home while we are already undergoing a period of sustained record high immigration?

Art that we buy for ourselves reveals a lot about us (yes, even those customers who "don't know anything about art but know what I like when I see it" but who actually do have an appreciation of art that just needed some encouragement) - but we have never considered that the value and intended longevity of a purchase might mean something too.  But we have been left wondering if this (hopefully temporary!) sales blip for NZ's largest art print and poster gallery provides an insight into the current mindset and perhaps future plans for the kiwi diaspora?

Gifts for Xmas 2014 - Mailing Dates

As always pre-Christmas is an especially busy time for us here at NZ Fine Prints, art prints are perennially popular Xmas gifts and making sure we deliver on time for Xmas around the world and throughout NZ is vitally important. Please call us on 0800 800 278 if you have any questions about delivery of your prints in the lead up to Xmas.

NZ Fine Prints Christmas Mailing Dates for 2014 are as follows:

Delivery worldwide at our standard rate of just $NZ15 (for any number of prints):

Australia

Please order your gifts by Wednesday 10th December 2014

UK & Europe, East Asia, North America & South Pacific

Please order your gifts by Monday 8th December 2014

Rest of World

Order Xmas gifts by Friday 5th December 2014

Xmas Delivery to NZ Addresses

Standard Delivery for $NZ6 (for any number of prints)

We need to have your orders for prints being delivered as gifts for Xmas by 3pm Friday 19th December 2014

Deadline for next day courier delivery via CourierPost with guaranteed delivery for Xmas day is 3pm Tuesday 23 December

Framed Prints - please order 10 working days before these mailing dates to ensure we can deliver by Christmas.

Gift Vouchers

NZ Prints also deliver gift vouchers by mail to NZ addresses if ordered by 23 December - and email gift vouchers are even being purchased on Xmas day itself and delivered instantly around the world. Now that is last minute Christmas shopping!

Shipping & Delivery Updates

As we get closer to Xmas we will update any delays or known issues with Xmas delivery on our shipping & delivery page.